


Spy Hill

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: Commando [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1890s, Adventure, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - America, Alternate Universe - Army, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Original, Alternate Universe - War, Asian Character(s), Bigotry & Prejudice, Bisexual Male Character, Boer War, Britain, British soldiers, Challenge fic, Courage, Disabled Character, Friendship, Gen, Historical slash, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Character of Color, Male Friendship, Master & Servant, Multi, Older Character, Original Fiction, Original Slash, Prompt Fic, Recovery, Romance, Slash, Soldiers, South Africa, South African War, War, alternate universe - Africa, alternate universe - Maryland, cognitively disabled, don't need to read other stories in the series, gen - Freeform, officers, original gen, servantfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-10-19 18:06:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: "Fairview was the finest friend a man could have, and the finest battle-companion. I dared not risk doing anything that might break our friendship."On a hot summer's day, on a high hill surrounded by the enemy, the best battle-companion can turn out to be the truth.Rook and Fairview have worked alongside each other for years, first as officers in the navy, then as officers on a steamship, and finally as colonels in an invading army. Members of a nation where tiny differences in rank are considered all-important, the two men defy convention by treating each other as equals.But now their life-long bond is about to meet its greatest strain, when they are ordered to seize and defend a hill whose landscape is unknown, in the company of soldiers who may be incompetent or treacherous. Will Rook and Fairview's friendship remain by the end of the battle? Or will their lives take an unexpected detour as they struggle to survive on Spy Hill?





	1. We Won't All Be Coming Back

**Author's Note:**

>   
> 
> 
> _[Larger version of map](http://duskpeterson.com/fortfrederickmap.jpg)._

_The year 403, the seventh month. (The year 1896 Barley by the Old Calendar.)_

> _Words spoken by the field-cornet of the Mippite forces at Spy Hill, to his soldiers before the battle:_
> 
> "Citizens of the republic, we're now going in to attack the enemy, and we won't all be coming back. Do your duty and trust in your gods."

  
o—o—o

It was the incident with the white spaniel which gave Fairview and me our first hint that we hadn't been total blockheads to bring along Doyle. 

I have to explain that we hadn't yet reached Spy Hill. Between Spy Hill and our camp to the west lay farmland. We'd marched through the farmland practically on tiptoe, hidden by the mist and the night and our own efforts to suppress all sound. We held our breaths when we reached Big Pool Road, which runs from southwest to northeast, parallel to Spy Hill. There was no way to avoid the road; going any further south or north would bring us up against the encampments of the Mippite soldiers. So our two lines of troops marched ever so softly across the road lined by Mippite farms, any one of which might sound the alarm and spoil our surprise attack. 

It didn't help that the night was so black that we couldn't see our hands before our faces. I'd already spent three hours searching for one of my companies that had lost its way. By the time I arrived back, the rest of my men had fallen asleep, exhausted from the week's battles. Waking them had taken yet more time. 

Now the moon was out, lighting the white mist around us. It was when we were just past the farmyards, and barely beginning to let out our breaths, that Doyle decided to have a chat. 

"Bloody stupid way to attack the 'siegers of a fort," he announced to me cheerfully. Even though the mist dimmed the moonlight, I could see the outline of his slumped shoulders and could imagine his scowl. "The Mippite soldiers are camped on top of this hill, while the fort is miles away, so what're we doing scrambling over rocks in the middle of the night? It don't make no sense. All of us fellows say so. But you officers, you don't pay us no mind. Nobody wants us enlisted men around – _we_ know that." 

"All of us fellows" were Doyle's perpetual, invisible backing for his grumbles. It wasn't Doyle's grumbles that bothered me; I'd learned to ignore them long ago. It was the fact that he was voicing them aloud. 

He'd at least had sense enough to whisper; otherwise, I've no doubt that the other soldiers in my battalion, all of whom were on edge, would have jumped on him in a heap in their eagerness to be the first to gag him. But I'd made the mistake, at the beginning of this night, of telling my men that they could whisper a quick word to me during our attack on the hill "if it's important." I'd forgotten that Doyle held a different definition of "important" than the rest of the world. 

To jump on Doyle myself, satisfying though the act might be, was unfortunately below the dignity of a colonel. I gestured to Canton, my soldier-servant, but he was busy looking nervously at the cows we were passing. The cows watched us go by without emitting a single moo. 

"So what me and the other fellows say is, this ain't no way to run a war. Cramming us all into them tiny boxcars, making us swim across a right big river, then ordering us to wriggle on our bellies for a mile or three. It ain't natural. It ain't dignified. See, me and the fellows got our standing to think of. We can't be acting all low, or the fellows in the 1st Ninth will be all after us—" 

"Doyle." It was the colonel of the 1st Battalion of the Ninth Landstead's Fusiliers; he had been marching at the head of the line of soldiers nine yards away from ours. The fact that he had been able to hear Doyle at that distance was a bad sign. He leaned over and whispered to Doyle, "If you do not remain silent until we win the summit, your colonel and I will rethink our promise not to chain you and throw you into Balmer Harbor." He gave Doyle one of his pleasant smiles. 

"You don't got to be like that." Doyle sunk into one of his sulking tones. "We fellows know when we ain't wanted." Then he fell back into his place in my line and was mercifully silent. 

I gave Fairview a smile of thanks. He whispered in my ear, "We should have drowned him before we let him come on this expedition." 

I began to snort with amusement, then caught myself in time. I gave him the slight shove that had meant – ever since we were boys – "We'll talk later, the grown-ups are listening." 

But we were too late. The General had fallen back. I could hear his glare as he said, "Did I, or did I not, give orders for absolute silence during this attack?" 

His voice was far louder than Doyle's had been. The cows we were passing stirred restlessly. My own men stirred even more restlessly at seeing their colonel reprimanded in public. 

"I'm sorry, sir." I knew enough to confine my reply to a whispered apology. 

Fairview, though, tended to lose his common sense when I was the one being reprimanded. "Sir, one of Colonel Rook's men—" 

"Colonel Rook is responsible for the actions of his men." The General raised his voice further. I wondered at what point Colonel Tice, who was assigned the job of guiding our force up the hill, would fall back and join the dispute. A cow, nervous, backed into the cow behind her. 

If this continued, we'd have a stampede on our hands soon. I was struggling with a way to speak up to the General – Major-General R. Talbert Pentheusson, son-in-law to our Commander-in-Chief, and the youngest man of his rank in the Allied Armies of the Dozen Landsteads – and tell him that he should shut his bloody mouth and let more experienced veterans of older wars handle matters he was incompetent to handle . . . But of course I couldn't say anything like that. So I tried saluting silently, hoping he would follow suit where silence was concerned. 

I don't know whether he would have, for at that moment, we heard the white spaniel. 

Perhaps it was a child's pet, though it was large enough to serve as a watchdog. Certainly it seemed to feel that this was its mission. It was yipping at the top of its lungs, darting in to nip at the heels of my men, then dashing away and yipping some more. 

The cows looked ready to flee. The farmhouses were still close behind us. 

"Shoot him," ordered the General, sounding understandably concerned at this turn of events. 

I refrained from reminding him that our rifles were unloaded, by his orders. Instead, I pointed out the reason for the empty rifles: "A rifle-shot would wake the locals, sir." 

"Well, bayonet the cur, then! Do something!" The General edged out of the way as the dog tried to nip at his heels. 

One of my soldiers – Lexington, I think it was – threw a rock. It missed the dog and hit the General squarely on the thigh. Amidst the General's far-too-loud curses, Doyle darted forward. 

"I'll take care of this," he announced to all the officers present. "Here, girl. C'mere, girl. That's a good girl." 

I didn't ask him how – in the darkness and the mist – he could tell that the spaniel was a bitch. The spaniel, half-hidden in the fog, had paused and was staring at Doyle. Then she made up her mind and trotted happily up to where Doyle crouched, his hands outstretched. 

Doyle fondled her ears; she consented to this, blessedly silent. Fairview, always quick off the mark, had obtained a bootstring from his soldier-servant; Doyle gently wrapped the string around the dog's neck and led the little guard away, making soothing noises to it. 

"Fine," said the General, huffing his frustration. "We continue. Colonels, make sure your men are silent from this point forth." 

I could still hear Doyle crooning at the dog in the distance. I declined to make any promises. The General walked forward, muttering about insubordination. 

I exchanged looks with Fairview. He leaned over and whispered, "Maybe we could toss _him_ in the harbor." 

I suppressed a roar of laughter that would have awoken every Mippite within cannon range.


	2. The System Breaks Down

> _A commentator's reflection on the events at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "The unquestioning subordination of the private judgment, the self-sacrificing obedience prescribed by the military code of duty, presuppose a certain minimum of intelligent direction on the part of those in supreme command. If that is wanting the moral foundation of the code is undermined; there comes a point at which the system breaks down, when insubordination becomes excusable, perhaps even necessary."

  
o—o—o

Maybe Fairview and I should have realized, on the morning before the attack, what role Doyle was likely to play in our future. At the time, however, our minds were filled with seemingly higher matters. 

They say that this is the operating principle of the Fates (in whom Fairview and I have always firmly believed, despite the fact that such guiding forces are much out of fashion these days). The Fates blindfold men to keep them from seeing what is coming next, and then the Fates mislead men's thoughts into dwelling upon matters of lesser importance. 

I can hear your outcry, so I hasten to say that the matter of lesser importance which occupied my mind that afternoon was not the upcoming attack on Spy Hill. No, what clogged my thoughts that day was how to keep from strangling my commanding officer. 

We sat there, the four of us: three officers from the General's brigade, while the fourth officer, Tice, had been loaned to the General by the Commander-in-Chief. We were all sitting in the General's tent, drinking his wine and smoking the cigars he had offered us when we first arrived. Nobody could accuse the General of being less than gracious toward his officers – at least, not when we were exchanging civilian civilities. 

"Fort Frederick," he said that morning, pointing to a spot on the map. "That is our objective, gentlemen." 

The four of us leaned forward, as though we had not already known our objective when we boarded the army train at Balmer City that would carry us west. The map was evidently out of date; the tiny dot on the map that represented Fort Frederick had been relabelled "Compassion Life Prison" in a newer hand. 

Puffing at his pipe – he had declined the cigar – Tice said, "I can't imagine how the Seventh Landstead's army got itself penned into such a tight place." 

"They were trying to free the prisoners there," the General replied, stating the obvious. 

"But there aren't any prisoners at Fort Frederick," interjected Spearman, who, as head of the Allied Armies' Engineers, rarely spoke in these discussions, other than to ask technical questions. 

"Except ours," murmured Fairview, passing me a biscuit. I dunked the hard biscuit into my tea in order to soften it to the point where I wouldn't break a tooth while biting into it. Rations were short. 

"We know that _now_ ," responded the General, beginning to show his well-known exasperation with subordinates. "But the Seventh Landstead received misleading reports. Fort Frederick was still a prison until a short time before the war began; there was every reason to believe that it still held thousands of prisoners." 

"In other words, the Seventh Landstead's army fell into the Mippites' trap," Tice interpreted. "Pass the biscuits, Rook – there's a good fellow." 

I did so, checking carefully afterwards to see whether my hand was still attached to its wrist. Tice always wore a scabbard at his belt that held his bayonet. 

Perhaps with his mind also dwelling on such matters, the General said sharply, "It is no longer the Seventh Landstead's army that is endangered, Tice. The danger lies to several thousand soldiers in the _Allied_ Armies of the Dozen Landsteads. Our landsteads agreed to this wartime alliance because we could see that, if the Mippites succeed in destroying one landstead's army, all of us in the Dozen Landsteads are endangered." 

"Granted," said Tice briefly. "The Seventh Landstead was a dunce, so we're saving its army's skin, for the sake of the common good. And then?" 

"Then we go further west, to free the prisoners in western Mip." The General relaxed back in his field-chair, having made his point. "Meanwhile, the rest of the Allied Armies will attack Mip from the east and free the prisoners there." He pointed to a separate map showing the Mippite capital, where a dot was labelled "Mercy Life Prison." "The Seventh Landstead's objective was a good one, even if their army acted overly hastily." 

Fairview and I exchanged looks, wondering whether we had ever been so young and naive as our General. True, the Mippites had foully abused their convicts over the decades – including, in recent months, a Seventh Landsteader who died from a vicious beating at the hands of his guards. 

But given how little the individual landsteads cared about each other's welfare, would they have gathered together to wage war against another nation if they had not envisioned a higher goal? 

Not defense. Gold. The Magisterial Republic of Mip had become the economic engine room of the Midcoast nations. Whoever controlled Mip, controlled Mip's treasuries. 

Even so . . . 

"Men are dying in Fort Frederick," Fairview pointed out, tapping his cigar over the General's silver ashtray. "However foolish the Seventh may have been in allowing its army to be trapped in Fort Frederick, the Seventh's soldiers _are_ Landsteaders. They don't deserve to die of hunger and thirst, killed by foreigners." 

There was a grudging acknowledgment of this from the rest of us, in the form of gruff grunts. Leaning forward, Spearman rested his chin on his fists, asking, "How bad is the situation at Compassion Prison, I mean Fort Frederick, sir?" 

"Very bad," replied the General with a sigh. "They have no wells there – they depend on rainwater, and this month has been exceedingly dry. The reports they've managed to heliograph out tell of soldiers dying in the dozens from thirst, hunger, disease. Civilians too – a few Landstead nationals who live in this area took refuge with them. There are women and children in the fort." 

This news roused all of us. "We must rescue them!" declared Fairview, thumping his fist on the table that held the maps. 

"But how?" asked Spearman, always concerned with the practical details. 

The General, pedantic as usual, pointed to the map again. "Fort Frederick. Originally built as a military fort, here in western Mip during the early years of Vovimian settlement in this area, as protection against raids from the settlers from the First Landstead who were making their homes in what eventually became eastern Mip. When the First Landstead broke from the other landsteads and renamed itself as the Queendom of Yclau, the fort became a military prison during the Thousand Years' War between Yclau and Vovim, in their dispute over who would control the land of Mip. When the Magisterial Republic of Mip won its independence from both nations, the military prison was converted into a civilian facility for life prisoners. It was recently abandoned and is being used as a fort again, by our besieged countrymen." The General leaned back in his seat at the end of this tedious recital of facts we all knew. 

Fairview, ever polite, tried to make some use of the recital. "How strong are the fort's defenses, sir?" 

"Strong enough to have kept the Seventh Landstead's soldiers protected during these months of the siege. Unfortunately, the fort is easier to protect than to break out of. It is on a hill, of course, but the area surrounding the hill is now controlled by the Mippite forces. There is a mountain range directly to the east—" The General pointed to the right of the fort, where the map abruptly turned blank. "The Commander-in-Chief has judged that it would be difficult to attack from that direction. We've already tried an attack from the south, as you know. That leaves the west." 

Tice was frowning as he leaned over the map. "I see that the mapmaker has marked Compassion Prison with its most recent name, Fort Frederick. I take it that means this is a recent map?" 

Spearman had a sudden coughing fit. Fairview and I bit down smiles. The style of the lettering made clear that the map was very old indeed, as Tice must have known when he asked his question. 

"Ah . . . no." The General twiddled his cigar, keeping his gaze turned away from Tice. "I believe that this is a reproduction of an ancient map made by a Landsteader surveyor who accompanied the Vovimian explorers on their early expeditions to these parts." 

"That would be why the map shows nothing east of Fort Frederick?" Picking up his glass of sherry, Fairview kept his expression carefully neutral. 

"Yes," replied the General, clearly missing the import of the question. "But to return to what I was saying before: We are attacking the Mippite besiegers from the west. Unfortunately, as you know, our big guns are not well placed at the moment." 

There was a collective sigh from all of us as we stared gloomily at the map. The General had hit upon a matter that we could all agree upon. 

One would think that a nation which had treaties with all of its neighbors would be in a position of safety. True, the Dozen Landsteads was now at war with one of those neighbors – the Magisterial Republic of Mip – but our treaties with the Queendom of Yclau and the Kingdom of Vovim, which required them to lend us military aid if we were attacked, should have held true. 

The trouble was that Yclau and Vovim both had similar treaties with Mip. Moreover, there was some dispute by foreigners as to which nation was the aggressor in this conflict: Mip or the Dozen Landsteads. 

The result was that Yclau and Vovim had refused to lend us either troops or arms. Since the Dozen Landsteads owned the Balmer & Vovim railroad, we had been able to send troops by train through Yclau and Vovim territory, disembarking our soldiers immediately south of the Potomac River, which forms the border between southern Vovim and western Mip. When it became clear that an attack at Fort Frederick from the south would not work, we had politely requested permission from the government of Vovim to place our artillery on the Vovimian mountains directly south of Fort Frederick. 

Our request was sent to the King and his Parliament. Parliament debated the matter. The King met with his advisors. We drummed our fingers while the Mippites, awaiting our second attack, began to entrench. 

Have you heard of entrenchment? It's a military technique invented by the Vovimians, though used only on a small scale by them. The Mippites, on the other hand, have brought the art of entrenchment to perfection – which gives the lie to the common notion that they are a peaceful people with no standing army and little experience in firearms. In actual fact, every Mippite is trained as a soldier from boyhood onwards. Mip's civilian army is a formidable force. 

At any rate, we eventually received an answer back from the Vovimians. They would allow us to plant our big guns on their land . . . not across from Fort Frederick, but five miles further west along the Potomac, at a mountain across from the mouth to Mip's Licking Creek. 

Our gunners are skilled, but not so skilled that they can fire a gun and have its shells land five miles away, on encampments that they cannot see because of all the intervening hills. We sourly accepted Vovim's offer, though, since we knew we would receive no better. 

"I have good news," said the General. All of us perked up. We could use good news, after a week like the last one. "You see this mountain that's to the northwest of Fort Frederick?" The General pointed at the map, and we all leaned forward to look, even though we all knew what mountain he meant. As of the previous night, we were camped at the southern foot of that unnamed mountain. "The Commander-in-Chief has just sent word that he has succeeded in clearing this mountain of all the Mippite forces. The Mippites have withdrawn their big guns from the mountain." 

"Thank the Fates," murmured Fairview. The rest of us shared his sentiment. Those guns had ground our troops to grains of sand, ever since we crossed the Potomac for the second time. In theory, our own guns should have been able to put theirs out of commission, since our guns were within range of that mountain. In fact, the Mippite gunners continued to shell us, no matter how hard we attacked their guns. 

"Now that we control that mountain, we will be able to bring our big guns onto its slopes," the General said, pointing out the obvious again. "The Mippite gunners have withdrawn somewhere east." He waved in a vague manner at the blank portion of the map. 

"Then we have a clear road to Fort Frederick?" Being an engineer, Spearman was not always entirely clear as to army maneuvers. Which was just as well; Spearman's naive questions put the General in a good mood, since the General could actually answer such questions. 

"Alas, no," said the General. "We still have the forces surrounding Fort Frederick to contend with." 

"Exactly where does their line of defense begin, sir?" asked Fairview, leaning over further to stare at the blank spot on the map. As he did so, his face came into full illumination from the lamp. It was a young face for a man of middle age; Fairview seemed immune to the wrinkles and sunspots that plagued the rest of us. His movements were graceful, though that might have been due to his years as a waterman, balancing himself on tilting boats. 

On the other hand, I'd spent most of my life as a waterman too, and I was still waiting for that moment when grace and fair looks would descend upon me. 

"The Mippites who retreated are somewhere beyond Ammippian Springs." The General pointed at a tiny town on the map that marked the crossroads between Big Pool Road and the east-west highway of the Magisterial Turnpike, which ran all the way from the ocean bordering the Dozen Landsteads to the inner nations of the continent. That makes it sound impressive; in fact, this portion of the turnpike was a dirt road. 

"Do we control Ammippian Springs, sir?" asked Tice. He had leaned back in his chair after a quick look at the map, having undoubtedly memorized it from the first moment he saw it. 

"We do, as of last night," the General replied with satisfaction. "There were some Mippite soldiers there, but we chased them off. The local residents fled with the Mippite army. Unfortunately, we don't control the turnpike beyond that point. There's some sort of mountain here—" He gave a vague wave of the hand toward the portion of the map that was east of our own unnamed mountain. "They may have fled there. Or perhaps they have joined their comrades in the encampments surrounding the fort. We don't know." 

This was tedious; at this rate, the General would spend a week showing us the map and telling us what he didn't know. I decided to replace his rowboat slowness with the swiftness of a skipjack. I pointed to the map, saying, "What about this ridge that's to the southeast of our camp, sir?" 

"Stone Quarry Ridge," Spearman read aloud from the map. 

"That is the ancient name for it," the General said. "However, it is better known as Spy Hill." 

Tice's gaze, which had been centered on his pipe, flicked over to the General. "Spy?" 

"Spy Hill, Lookout Hill . . ." The General shrugged. "The name varies, depending on how you translate the Vovimian words. The hill received its name from the fact that, when the early Vovimian explorers reached this far, they climbed the ridge and saw the mountains that led into what is now eastern Mip." 

"They saw the Dozen Landsteads' territory, in fact." Fairview frowned as he stared at the map. He was no doubt thinking, as many of us had thought since the beginning of this war, that if we could regain control of the territory that had been ceded by Yclau – but which had once been part of the Dozen Landsteads – then our territory would be large enough to make our nation a true rival to Yclau and Vovim. 

The creases in the General's forehead deepened as the General glared at Fairview. Generals are not supposed to glare at officers who point out nothing more than simple facts that schoolboys could recite, but this was General Pentheusson, and we were used to his refusal to accept the necessity of this war. Now he said, as he had so often said, "The goal of this war is to release the trapped Landsteaders and free the abused prisoners, Colonel Fairview. Nothing more. The Magisterial Republic of Mip has been a sovereign nation for longer than you have been alive, and our presence here is not intended to change that. Frankly," he added, setting aside his cigar, "I would far rather that our dispute with Mip was settled by diplomats, in a peaceful manner. We must hope that our diplomatic office continues its hard work." 

I managed to refrain from rolling my eyes. Every bloody time we had a council of war, it ended like this: with the General preaching that we shouldn't go to war. The Fates know that I wasn't one of those war-fiends whom the General railed against; I wasn't seeking excuses to go to war in order to annex Mip. But a Landsteader had been cruelly killed by the Mippites, his fellow Landsteaders had naturally sought to release any other Landsteaders who were imprisoned by the Mippites, and matters had developed from there. We were at war; we might as well accept it and continue with our job. 

"Spy Hill," Fairview reminded the General gently. "Do we control it yet?" 

"Not yet," said the General. At his tone, we all stiffened and looked at one another. 

Tice cleared his throat. "That is our immediate objective?" 

"That is our objective tonight, gentlemen. Look here." The General pointed to the map again. "Spy Hill is located between this mountain we control and Fort Frederick, which is to our southeast. The hill is a ridge that runs from the southwest to the northeast. On the eastern side of the hill are the Mippites. We are camped to the west. Now, there are only two ways around that hill: to the north or to the south. We dare not take the northern route: though we control Ammippian Springs, which is located near the northern tip of Spy Hill, it's likely that the Mippites are awaiting us just down the Magisterial Turnpike, at the foot of this mountain to the northeast of Spy Hill—" He waved his hand again at the blank part of the map. "And at the southern tip of Spy Hill is Big Pool. We have already seen how heavily defended that town is." 

"So we must go over Spy Hill," Tice concluded. 

"We must go atop it, and we must _seize_ it," the General concluded. "We don't know how many Mippite soldiers are encamped there, but however many they are, we must drive them off. Once we gain control of that hill, we will have the strategic advantage, since we will be overlooking the Mippite encampments surrounding Fort Frederick." Satisfied, the General permitted himself a small smile. 

"What about the Mippite guns?" 

The General's smile faded. "I don't understand your question, Colonel Rook." 

"You said that the Mippites had withdrawn their big guns, sir," I reminded him, with perhaps not as much patience as Fairview would have shown if he had voiced the obvious. "Where have they withdrawn the guns? Will their artillery be within range of Spy Hill?" 

"No doubt we will learn that, once we are atop the hill." 

Spearman uttered something that sounded like a suppressed groan. Fairview rubbed his eyelids. Tice tamped down the tobacco in his pipe with vigorous motions. I tried again, pointing to the map. "What about this knoll that's located next to Ammippian Springs, just north of Spy Hill? Do we control it? Has it been cleared of Mippites? It's within firing range of Spy Hill." 

"Colonel Rook—" 

There was a warning note to the General's tone which I chose to ignore. "We don't even know what the terrain is like past Spy Hill. Don't you see, sir, we could be walking into a death trap!" 

The General was now wearing his lock-him-up-for-three-weeks-with-bread-and-water expression. Before he could speak, though, Fairview quickly intervened. "What do you wish the attacking party to do, once it has seized the hill, sir?" 

This simple question seemed to catch the General off-guard. He looked as blank as the right-hand side of the map for a moment, and then his expression cleared. "It has got to stay there." 

We waited. The General said nothing further. 

Tice uncurled from his position of lounging. He said in a mild voice, "No doubt the General is planning to place some of our big guns on the summit of Spy Hill, so that we can defend ourselves against the Mippite guns." 

For a moment more, the General looked blank; then he nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I will be discussing that with the Commander-in-Chief when we speak next. Any other questions? Major Spearman, you haven't spoken yet." 

I closed my mouth, which I had opened for another protest. Looking apologetic, as he always did whenever he questioned the General's plans, Spearman said, "Stone Quarry Ridge." 

"Yes?" The General surreptitiously eyed the rest of us, to see whether we understood the remark, but for once, we were as much at a loss as he was. 

"Stones, sir," Spearman explained. "If the hill was once used as a quarry, it must be stony. How stony? You'll be wanting trenches, no doubt." 

"Trenches, yes." The General relaxed again, finishing off the last of his sherry. "And defense shelters as well. Stones will provide material for shelters, will they not?" 

"That depends on the size of the stones, sir," replied Spearman. "And stones might make the digging a bit difficult." 

"Well, we'll deal with that when we get there. Gentlemen," the General added as he rose to his feet. "I appreciate your concerns, but until we actually stand on that hill, I cannot answer questions about fiddling details. Our first job is to reach the summit. Await your orders, please." He spoke firmly, no doubt having seen me open my mouth again. 

Sighing, I gave up and rose to my feet, in order to position myself at attention. Most officers in the modern world pass on their orders in written form, but the General preferred the old-fashioned method of issuing his orders by speech. I privately suspected this was because it made it easier for him to deny afterwards that he'd issued disastrous orders. 

"Now, then," he said as he watched the four of us line up as best we could in the confined space of his tent. "I have discussed my plans with the Commander-in-Chief, and he has agreed to all of them, so these orders come, not from me, but from the Commander-in-Chief. I will now read aloud the orders he has issued." 

I saw Fairview arch his right eyebrow. This was new. At least there was some hope that, if events went wrong at Spy Hill, Fairview and I wouldn't be blamed; we could refer back to the written orders that the Commander-in-Chief had issued. 

Standing slightly stooped, so that he could read the orders in the wavering lamplight, the General read aloud, "'The Commander-in-Chief has decided to seize Spy Hill. The operation will be conducted by Major-General R. Talbert Pentheusson, who will detail two battalions of his own brigade: the 1st and 2nd Ninth Fusiliers, headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Fairview and Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Roman Rook. To these will be attached about one hundred men of Lieutenant-Colonel Tice's Mounted Infantry and a half company of the Allied Engineers. Rendezvous just east of the encampment at 9 p.m. Men must be kept concealed from the locals. One hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition and one day's complete ration will be carried by the men. All horses to be left at the Allied Engineer bivouac—' You'll have to walk, Tice." 

It was a moment before any of us realized that this was the General's attempt at a joke. Then Tice twisted his mouth slightly. "Yes, sir. No doubt I and my men will manage the march without our horses." 

Looking peeved that his witticism had not been properly appreciated, the General went on: "'Men will carry entrenching tools in stretchers. Men will of course carry filled water-bottles, and should be cautioned that a refill may be difficult. The Commander-in-Chief will arrange that the ambulance corps and stretcher-bearer corps send detachments. No ambulance to be nearer than the Allied Engineer bivouac till daylight. Signed, Enoch Lombard, Commander-in-Chief of the Dozen Landsteads' Allied Army.' That is all, gentlemen. You are dismissed." 

I opened my mouth, but the General had already turned away. Quicker-witted than me – or perhaps simply more sly – Tice said, "I should like to try one of those cigars of yours after all, General, if I might. The aroma from them is quite tantalizing." 

"Certainly, Tice." The General's voice turned warm. "Gentlemen, I believe you know your way out? Tice, have a look at where these came from. The Second Landstead produces some of the finest cigars in the world. It's a shame that its tobacco production is forever being interrupted by the warfare between the Second and Third Landsteads. . . ." 

The General was no longer paying attention to the rest of us. His soldier-servant, standing at alert outside, had opened the tent flap so that we could exit; Spearman was already ducking under the flap. I exchanged looks with Fairview, but he shook his head slowly. Sighing yet again, I followed Fairview out of the tent. Behind us, Tice was beginning to speak to the General in a low voice.


	3. They Went Up Recruits

> _Comment by General Pentheusson to the High Masters' Commission on the War in the Magisterial Republic of Mip, speaking of the Landsteader troops who climbed Spy Hill:_
> 
> "They went up recruits, I think . . ."

  
o—o—o

Outside the General's tent, the morning had turned cool, as a light rain fell. For me, wrapped in my greatcoat, it was a merciful change from the week of heat we had endured. However, for the enlisted men, it was a different matter. Many of them had lost their greatcoats in the week's fighting, and they were currently without tents, since our supply train had undergone problems in fording the Potomac. As Fairview and I paused to give new orders to our lesser officers, I could see, out of the corner of my eye, enlisted men shivering as they tried futilely to light cooking fires with damp wood. There was little for the men to cook, in any case; our supplies were now limited to ration-biscuits and canned oyster-juice. 

It shouldn't have been like this. Our orders, from the Commander-in-Chief himself, had been to travel as swiftly as possible to Fort Frederick to break the siege. But our General was a slow, methodical man; he had dilly-dallied, giving the Mippites ahead of us time to prepare their defense. 

After Fairview and I had given our lesser officers their orders and left them to make their preparations for the upcoming attack, I said to Fairview, "I'm beginning to think that there are advantages to the Mippite system of electing its army officers." 

Fairview chuckled as he used his fingers to comb out some drops of rain from his tawny beard. I had often teased him about his determination to go against current fashion by wearing a full beard. As far as I could tell, the beard had never been any disadvantage to him in attracting admirers, either female or male. 

Now he said, "At least our army permits its commissioned officers to rise in rank. You or I could get a promotion on the field this time. Shall we make a wager?" 

I chuckled. Fairview and I made wagers on everything: on which of us would be promoted first, on how many of the enemy we would kill – even on how many of our own men would die in battle, though we took care not to talk about such gambling in our men's presence. None of this was meant with any seriousness. It was a game – a way to pass time during the tedium between exciting battles. 

"What do you think of the General's plan?" I asked. 

Fairview raised his right eyebrow in an elegant arch. "What do _you_ think?" 

"It could work." 

"Perhaps. But what are we trying to accomplish?" 

"To hold a hill of strategic importance. If we have field guns up there . . ." 

"Yes, if we have guns," Fairview interrupted. "Do you notice how, amidst all his plans, the General didn't mention _when_ he planned to send the big guns up to the summit?" 

"Blast!" I exploded. "You should have said something to him." 

Fairview shook his head as he settled his helmet's brim over his brow, in an attempt to shield himself from the rain. "He was growing obstinate, toward the end. I'll ask him later today, when he's in a better mood." 

"He's never in a good mood," I responded, my own mood turning black. I'll admit that the General wasn't the worst officer we had served under – I reserved that title for the officer who had tried to forcibly separate Fairview and me, back when we both served in the Ninth Landstead's navy, in our youth. That particular officer was long dead, killed during the bloody naval battles between the Ninth Landstead and the Eighth Landstead. 

Speaking of which . . . 

"Gentlemen." 

We turned. Tice had taken shelter under a chestnut tree; his pipe glowed in the darkness of that shelter. His face was too shadow-grey for me to read his expression. 

Fairview could be blunt when necessity arose. "Tice," he said, "can we count on you in this battle?" 

Tice paused to draw in a breath of smoke before replying. He was a large, stocky man – not the sort of man you'd expect to be a scout, which was how he had started his army career. Before that, he had served in the navy; most Landsteaders did, at one time or another, since all of the landsteads border the Bay. We have the finest navies in the Midcoast nations. I wish I could say the same about our armies. 

It was during our naval years that Fairview and I had first met Tice. Now Tice contemplated his pipe, saying, "We go back a long ways, gentlemen." 

"We do," Fairview agreed quietly. 

"Back in those days, you two were just a couple of harum-scarum university lads – all full of jests and wild threats, the way boys often are. It was amusing to watch your posturing." He stroked his pipe-stem carefully. "Amusing, that is, until you sunk half my battle fleet." 

We said nothing. All the tension of the landstead rivalries was present at this moment – the tension that had caused foreign nations to deny that we Landsteaders would be able to hold together our military alliance. Even our landsteads' political alliance, which had lasted nearly two thousand years, was forever on the point of breaking. 

Suddenly, in the darkness under the tree, Tice's craggy face broke into a smile. "Frankly, gentlemen, if I must be on a battlefield with you again, I'd far rather be on your side. You can count on me to protect your backs." 

I let out the breath I hadn't known I was holding. Fairview said lightly, "And we'll do all we can to protect you and your men. However, you've ten years' more experience than we do in the army. I hope you'll be willing to give us advice, should we need it." 

Tice stepped out from under the tree, tapping his ashes to the ground and grinding them underfoot with his boot. "First piece of advice: Go to bed. It's much easier to fight a battle when you've rested. Both of you have rings under your eyes." 

"Are you planning to take that advice yourself?" I challenged him. 

"I wish I could." His gaze drifted eastward. "I've persuaded the General to let me scout the hill this afternoon. I only wish I had time to send scouts further east." 

"A recent map would help." Fairview adjusted the angle of his helmet; the rain was beginning to lighten to a drizzle. "If the General sent up an observation balloon . . ." 

"I suggested as much to the General," replied Tice. 

He said nothing more, so we could both guess how his suggestion had been received. We were all silent for a minute, until the silence was interrupted by a series of booms. 

We turned to look east, but it was impossible to see far in the drizzle. Fairview shook his head. "The enemy certainly has its big guns there somewhere. I wish I knew where." 

"At least they aren't shelling the camp presently," said Tice. "A brief respite. Gentlemen, if you will excuse me . . . " 

I waited until Tice was well out of earshot before asking in a low voice, "Do you think we can trust him?" 

Fairview shrugged. "Can one ever trust an Eighth Landsteader? Tice and his men have a reputation for honor. I suppose we'll see tonight whether they live up to it." 

I looked sharply at Fairview. "You think the mounted infantry will lead us into an ambush?" 

"Tice does seem to have taken great care to ensure that he would be in charge of the scouting." Fairview took out a cigarette, studied it, and then threw it away with a gesture of disgust. "Now I'm as bad as the war-fiends of whom the General is always complaining. The General is right about this much: we need to trust our allies in this war. If the Dozen Landsteads fall once more to quarrelling amongst one another—" 

"—we'll lose this war." I sighed heavily. "The General is leading us, Tice is scouting for us, the Mippite guns are hidden somewhere. . . . I don't like the odds we're facing." 

"Think of the women and children at Fort Frederick." Fairview spoke softly. Like me, he was unmarried, and knowing him, he would not have fathered any illegitimate children. But he had been raised by his grandmother after his mother died of influenza and his father died in an earlier war between the Ninth Landstead and the Sixth and Seventh Landsteads. He had a high opinion of his grandmother and of all women and children and creatures that are in need of help. 

Which was probably why Doyle was with us, rather than at the bottom of the Bay, where he deserved to be. 

I furrowed my brow, thinking. Fairview's estimate of women was high enough that I wondered sometimes what was preventing him from marrying. But since I lived in fear that Fairview would ask me the same question, I had never raised the topic with him. Not that there would have been anything strange about my answer. After all, friendship is a bond as strong as marriage. Our friendship was unusual only insofar as Fairview and I had not created other bonds in our life. Most of the officers in the Allied Armies were married or were sharing their beds with their soldier-servants . . . 

If you were a Mippite, you'd probably be screwing up your face in disgust at this point. I've heard that Mippites are so dedicated to the principles of egalitarianism that they've recently passed a law that forbids sexual relations between men of different ranks. In the Dozen Landsteads, we all had a long laugh when we heard of that law. For us, it makes no sense to have sexual relations, except with someone of lower rank. Would you really want a wife who had veto power in your marriage? Or would you really want your bed-service given to you by a man who could dictate at what time of day you held your dinner? 

But Mippites, with their endless talk of love-mates and the joys of equality, are oblivious to all this. That was one of the causes of strain between our nation and theirs: our clear superiority in understanding proper social relations. 

Fairview and I were Landsteaders through and through, and I suppose that, in the ordinary way of things, we would each have taken one of our men to bed, or perhaps would have married. But circumstances had always been against us. 

We had first met when we were young boys, living on the same block of Balmer, the harbor capital of the Ninth Landstead. We'd attended the same boarding school – one that discouraged its students from choosing liegemen until after their university years. 

Well, after we'd attended university – together, of course – we'd been too busy with naval battles to worry about such matters. That was half a lifetime ago; the battles had continued for many seasons. 

Finally the war with the Eighth Landstead had ended, and we had returned to civilian life. Fairview was appointed as the pilot on an ocean steamship; I took a position as quartermaster on the same steamer. With duties that sent us away from land for most of the year, our marital prospects appeared poor, but certainly this would have been the time for us to choose liegemen for our beds. 

And perhaps we would have, if keeping track of Doyle's activities hadn't occupied all our time. 

Now I said heavily, "Yes, the women and children. Fairview, the General told me a few days ago that the Landsteaders at that fort are nearly at the point where they must eat horseflesh to survive. Landsteaders are dying every day there – we _must_ find a way to help them." 

"There's no question that we must," replied Fairview. "The only question is whether the General has chosen the best way. —Yes, Davey, what is it?" He paused to speak to his apprentice-aged messenger. 

"Excuse me for interrupting, sir. This just arrived for you." Davey offered him an envelope. 

"Our faithful postmen." Fairview took the envelope and held it up to the strengthening sunlight as the drizzle turned to mist. "We can't break through to Fort Frederick, yet somehow the postmen can reach us with our mail. Do you suppose we could hire them to improve communications in the army? —Thank you, Davey. Have you rested yet?" 

"I've tried, sir." The lad wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably. "It's hard, with those guns . . ." As he spoke, there was another boom in the distance. 

"They're not shelling us," Fairview pointed out. "They're probably trying practice shots, attempting to gauge the distance to some target. Have some food, have some rest – we'll be moving out again tonight." 

"We will?" Davey peered up cautiously at him. "Will you be taking me with you, sir?" 

His voice sounded anxious; no doubt he had heard that I had ordered my own messenger-lad not to leave his sickbed until we moved camp again. Would that I could have issued the same orders to all the soldiers in my battalion who were ill from our week's work. 

Fairview smiled at Davey. "Of course. I depend on your services. Now go have a bit of leisure – that's a good lad." 

Watching Davey skip away, I said, "Hark the adoring look he gave you. He has a mash on you." 

Fairview laughed as he slit the envelope open with his penknife. "Half the men in my battalion do. 'Fairview, Fair of View . . .' I've heard what they call me. —Ah, grandmama is as appropriate as always." 

"She sent you another battle prayer?" I looked over his shoulder at the letter. 

Fairview nodded. "'May we be prepared at all times to meet our Fates—'" 

"Inappropriate, you mean," I grumbled. "Do you really think that any soldier who serves under the General can claim to be prepared?" 

I gestured with my hand as Fairview pocketed the letter. As it happened, we had halted near the medical men, who were in the process of supervising the loading of their equipment onto a wagon. The doctors and their assistants would be coming with us, of course, although most of them would remain at Ammippian Springs, where the field hospital would be set up. 

The Queendom of Yclau had been distinctly miserly in lending us soldiers, but the queendom had at least lent us some of its doctors – and that was a gift worth keeping, given that Yclau had the finest physicians in the Midcoast nations. These particular doctors had come from a military hospital in the far southwest of Yclau. They had brought with them an ambulance corps trained to remove wounded men from the field during battle, as well as a group of men from one of Yclau's overseas colonies, who were being trained as stretcher-bearers. The colonials would not be expected to enter the battlefield themselves; in the upcoming battle, they would be given the lesser job of carrying the wounded down the hill and delivering water up to the edge of the summit. 

Except . . . 

I frowned, gave a quick glance at Fairview, and found that he was frowning too. Fairview looked at me, saw the hesitant query in my eyes, and nodded. We both strode forward. 

Healer Mahone was in the midst of supervising the striking of the field hospital's tent; he looked up with a faintly irritated expression as we interrupted him. "Colonels? I am rather busy—" 

"Where is your ambulance corps, sir?" I waved my hand toward the remainder of the scene: Yclau doctors, Yclau assistants, and colonial stretcher-bearers and water-carriers. No Yclau ambulancemen. 

Healer Mahone's expression of irritation increased. "Your General has sent my ambulancemen away – _without_ my authorization – to serve as support for the Commander-in-Chief's other troops. He told me – _after_ he had sent them away – that my colonial stretcher-bearers would be sufficient for the upcoming fight." 

Suppressing a sigh, I said, "I'm sure they will be, sir. They've been well-trained, I'm certain." 

"Mm." The doctor glanced at three of the dark-skinned colonials nearby. One of them – evidently the head of the stretcher-bearer corps – was showing the other two how to place a wounded man onto a stretcher without causing him unnecessary pain. Healer Mahone said, "Perhaps, perhaps. But you never know, with these colonials." 

He didn't bother to lower his voice. The head stretcher-bearer glanced at him briefly, then turned his attention back to his men. 

"Are you in need of any supplies, sir?" Fairview asked politely. 

"No, no." Healer Mahone waved his hand, looking harassed. "We have sufficient medical supplies . . . and I promise you, with the help of your engineers, we will see that enough water reaches your wounded." 

"Don't forget about water for the rest of us," I said in an attempt at jocularity. 

"Yes, yes." The healer waved his hand again. "The distribution of the remainder of the water falls into your own province . . . but we will have whatever water is available sent up by mules." 

He gestured toward the colonials. I saw the head stretcher-bearer's cheek twitch at this indirect reference to his service, but he continued to give instructions steadily to his men. 

"Well, all seems ready there, at least," observed Fairview as we walked away. 

"Assuming those colonials _do_ know any civilized behavior." I paused to look toward the edge of the camp, which ended at the Magisterial Turnpike. There was little to see beyond the camp. 

Two weeks before, we had attempted to attack the Mippites directly by fording the Potomac River close to Fort Frederick, at the town called Big Pool. As could have been predicted beforehand – indeed, many of us did predict it, quite loudly – the attack was a disaster. The Mippites had most of their forces entrenched in the area around Fort Frederick; the enemy simply picked off our men as we tried to cross the river. 

After our retreat back into Vovimian territory, the Commander-in-Chief – who had ordered the disastrous attack upon Big Pool – had recrossed the Potomac further west, at Licking Creek, and then had split up our forces. His main body of troops, which he himself led, went off to create a diversion while our General was supposed to slip his troops quietly forward and attack the Mippites from the west. 

Which might have worked if our General hadn't crept forward at an agonizingly slow pace, giving the Mippites time to entrench in new positions ahead of us. 

From where we camped – at the foot of the unnamed mountain that the Commander-in-Chief had succeeded in clearing of Mippite guns – I could not see Spy Hill to the southeast of us; it was hidden by trees and by a rise of ground in front of us. Long and narrow, with a narrower summit – that was the hill we would climb tonight, if the map held any relation to reality. Tice should be able to give us a good survey of the western slope, if he was indeed on our side. As for what lay on the eastern slope . . . 

Seeing my frown, Fairview said, "Still worrying?" 

"Worrying about the lay of the land." 

Fairview nodded. He was a steamer pilot; he knew the value of a good map. "There's a mountain to the east of where we stand now, which means it's to the northeast of Spy Hill – the General alluded briefly to that mountain, remember? I caught a glimpse of it during our attack on Big Pool. And I know its name, because one of our local guides was joking about it to me: Fairview Mountain." 

My frown deepened. "How close is this mountain to Spy Hill?" 

"I don't know; nor did I notice how high it was. I assumed at the time that surveys had already been done by the Commander-in-Chief's scouts." We walked a while further before Fairview said softly, "I don't think the greatest fault lies with the General, you know. The Commander-in-Chief is the one who appointed the General to his post. The Commander-in-Chief should have known that his son-in-law was too young for this assignment, and had too great a need to prove himself right, at the expense of his officers. And after the General acted too cautiously in the Battle of Big Pool . . ." 

"That wasn't the Commander-in-Chief's fault." 

"An officer is responsible for the actions of his men," Fairview replied primly, then grinned at me. "As we've both said on many occasions. Tice is right; we should be getting some rest. Our men have their orders now, so let's retire. We still have a few hours left before the troops need to assemble." 

"Wait a bit." I looked around at the camp. Everything appeared as it had when Fairview and I had entered the General's tent. Men crouched wearily over campfires or simply slept on the ground. Thanks to the General's slowness, they'd been fighting every day now for a week and had received precious little time to sleep. Since most of the men had lost their greatcoats, they had nothing warm to lie under at night. Many of the men wore the same clothes, unwashed, that they'd worn since they crossed the Potomac a second time. 

All of this I'd expected. What was missing was one man who could be guaranteed to be at the center of our camp, complaining loudly about our conditions. 

"Doyle," said Fairview, having reached the same conclusion I had while I mused. "Where is he?" He pulled out his spy-glass, which he always kept close at hand, and swiftly used it to give the camp a sweeping inspection from all angles. 

"Somewhere making trouble," I surmised. "Let's go find out where." 

Our search eventually took us to our tent, where our two soldier-servants were sitting cross-legged on the ground, smoking as they played dice with each other. They scrambled to their feet as we arrived. 

"Where is Doyle?" Fairview demanded. 

Fairview's soldier-servant looked blank. "I don't know, sir. I've been in the tent, putting your belongings in order." 

"Canton?" I addressed my own soldier-servant, who had a guilty look on his face. 

"Sorry, sir. I didn't realize you'd assigned him work, sir. He went by a few minutes ago. He was headed toward the bushes." He pointed to the eastern edge of camp. 

"The bushes?" I said blankly. Doyle was not the sort of man who bothered to hide his private parts when he made water. 

Quicker than I to catch on, Fairview asked, "With whom?" 

The guilt increased in Canton's expression. "Your messenger-lad, sir." 

"Canton!" I shouted. 

"I'm very sorry, sir." My soldier-servant indeed looked almost green with guilt. "I thought . . . since it was a member of another battalion . . . and you were with the General . . ." 

I caught Fairview's look and sighed. "Canton, next time you see Doyle making trouble, either deal with it yourself or find his sergeant." 

"But he's your pet." Stiles mumbled it under his breath. 

Fairview gave his soldier-servant a cool look. "What was that you said, Stiles?" 

Stiles took a deep breath before saying, "We were given to understand, sir, that Private Doyle was under your special protection. Was that incorrect?" 

_"Protection?"_ I roared. 

Fairview put a hand on my arm. "Colonel Rook and I recruited Doyle, Stiles, but he receives no special privileges. If anyone else is under that misapprehension, please correct them. Rook, we shouldn't waste time here." He pulled me away from the scene. 

"Protection!" I muttered as we headed toward the bushes. "Pet! Bloody blades, he's as sweet a pet as a sea nettle. The number of stings he has given us—" 

"Shh." Fairview slowed as we reached the bushes. It was easy to tell which was the correct bush. It was rustling. 

On a nod from Fairview, we both darted in. Fairview emerged holding Davey gently by the arm. I emerged clutching Doyle's back collar. 

"What the bloody blades do you think you're up to, Doyle?" I shouted. "Taking a messenger – an _apprentice_ of sixteen sun-cycles – into the bushes with you!" 

Doyle looked blank for a moment, and then brightened. "I was showing him my guidebook." 

I began to swear at him. Fairview, perhaps to shield the lad from my language, took Davey aside and began speaking quietly to him. 

"You and your bloody guidebook!" I concluded, shaking Doyle. "The number of times on this campaign that you've used that guidebook as an excuse for ill behavior—" 

"Oh, but it was important, Colonel!" As usual, Doyle managed to maintain a guileless expression. "I found in the book an ancient monument my old boat-master once told me about—" 

"You cannot _read_!" I shouted it in his face. 

Doyle gave his expression – well-perfected – of an innocent child being hurt. "It's a picture. My captain had described the monument to me. See?" Right on cue, he thrust the book at my face. 

Fairview returned without his messenger-lad. "No harm done. Davey was too innocent to understand Doyle's motives. I've solemnly warned him against going into isolated places with men who promise to show him their guidebooks or etchings or whatever else they have on hand." 

"My guidebook, yes!" Doyle eagerly thrust the book toward Fairview's face. 

"Doyle . . ." I said in a warning voice. 

"It's no good, Rook." With a grin, Fairview took the book from Doyle. "You know he's not going to leave us alone until we look at whatever he wants us to see." 

Sighing, I let go of Doyle's collar and leaned over to glance at the picture. It was indeed a halftone reproduction of a photograph of one of the ancient monuments that litters the Midcoast nations. The frieze on the monument showed an ancient battle – I could tell that from the war chariots and from the armor that protected the soldiers. On the left side of the picture, a charioteer, accompanied by his assistant, was pointing a spear at a bearded man who already appeared dead, for he was lying motionless on the ground. 

Between the bearded man and the spear stood a clean-shaven man, weaponless. The spear pointed in his direction; the horses reared; fearlessly, he stood his ground— 

_—the horses reared; I hesitated. Was Fairview dead? Was it worth my while to risk my own life for a dead man?_

_The spear came closer. I ran forward, placing my body between the weapon and my lover—_

—I caught my breath. Looking up, my eyes met Fairview's. There was sweat on his face. I wondered what he had seen. 

"There!" said Doyle cheerfully. "Wasn't that worth showing off? Don't I got the right of it?" 

"Doyle." Somehow, Fairview managed to break his gaze from mine. "If Colonel Rook or I catch you showing off your guidebook to any other underaged member of this army, we will carry out our original plan to chain you up and dump you in Balmer Harbor." 

As on the first occasion he spoke these words – when we had discovered Doyle, not for the first time, pilfering supplies on the steamer where we all worked – Doyle turned pale. Our threat never failed to evoke this response from him; I suspected that, like most watermen in the Dozen Landsteads, he couldn't swim and therefore had an inordinate fear of drowning. 

By tomorrow, he'd have forgotten the threat, as he always did. But by tomorrow, we would be in battle. Please the Fates, that would keep him out of trouble for one day. 

Fairview, seeing Doyle's temporary commitment to good behavior, handed him back his beloved guidebook. "Return to your company, Doyle," he said. "Your officers have new orders for you. Your colonel and I need to head to bed." 

At these careless words by Fairview, Doyle's appearance returned to normal. He looked at Fairview, then he looked at me, and then he sniggered. 

_"Go!"_ I roared. Doyle slipped away, stealing looks back at us. As soon as he reached another soldier he knew, he grabbed the man's arm. Faintly from the distance, I heard the words, "Colonels' bed." The other soldier looked at us and burst out laughing. 

Normally I would have winced. But at the moment I had a bigger worry than Doyle's filthy jokes about our supposed bedding arrangements. I was wondering what I should say to Fairview about what we'd seen. 

It was not the first occasion in my life when one cycle of time had touched another. Some people go through a lifetime without ever experiencing cycle forward or cycle back, but for me such moments of awareness had been frequent. Always cycle forward, always visions of my future with Fairview. It was one of the things that had often given me strength in battle: the knowledge that I had a future with Fairview. I would see him sitting beside me, or lying on the other bed opposite me, smoking his cigarette and exchanging jokes with me. On several occasions I'd seen him lying on the ground, staring dreamily up at the sky; we had apparently been having a day out getting grubby on his gunning skiff, for his beard was dirty, his shirt torn, his face cloud-dappled under a midday sun. 

Fairview said softly, "Fairview Mountain . . ." 

I looked quickly at him. "You think that battle took place near here?" 

Fairview started walking forward. "According to the halftone's caption, yes. The mountain was named after the bearded man whom the other soldier – a man named Crow – ran forward to save." 

_Crow_ was the ancient word for Rook. I felt a shiver cover my back. "Did the guidebook say anything more about that?" 

"No. I suppose that we can do a little research when we get home. . . . Well, here we are." 

We had reached the tent. I could hear our soldier-servants inside, making last-minute preparations for our sleeping arrangements. They were joking about what re-arrangements would occur once their colonels were alone together. 

I had no doubt that the jokes originated from Doyle. He had spread his suspicions all over the camp. Everywhere Fairview and I went these days, we encountered jokes – mainly good-natured, because our men knew of our honor, so most of them could not believe that Doyle's insinuations were true. But the insinuations made for a good jest. 

"Well," Fairview said again. 

"Well," I repeated. 

We looked at each other. I was wondering whether he had seen the same thing I had, and whether he had noticed that, in our past lives, we had been love-mates to each other. 

"Well, I should double-check on my men," said Fairview. 

"I too," I said quickly. I turned my back and began to walk away in as nonchalant a manner as I could. 

Already, I was regretting my hesitation at the tent flap. If I had entered the tent immediately, all would have been well. But I had given Fairview time enough to hear the jokes and to think about our cycle back, and in doing so, I had embarrassed him. That was cruel of me. Fairview was the finest friend a man could have, and the finest battle-companion. 

I dared not risk doing anything that might break our friendship.


	4. Let Us Not Give Way

> _Words spoken by the field-cornet of the Mippite forces at Spy Hill, to General Starke:_
> 
> "Let us struggle and die together. But, brother, let us not give way an inch more to the Landsteaders."

  
o—o—o

_"Fix bayonets."_

The words whispered by Tice rippled through the ranks like a ripple across the Bay, each soldier passing on the order to the man beside him. All around me, men pulled their bayonets from scabbards and attached the blades to the ends of their rifles. 

Fairview and I did the same. We had advised the General that, with his scouting experience, Tice should be in charge of the initial attack on the Mippite soldiers. As promised, Tice had visited Spy Hill that afternoon, and he had used the final hours of daylight to sketch a map of the prominent features of the western hillside. This he had used to accurately guide us to this point, at the western edge of the summit. Tice's scouts, who had crept up the hill while their officer was making the sketch, reported that there were only a few dozen Mippite soldiers at the summit. 

A small group of soldiers is just as capable of killing a man as a large one. I had my usual feeling in the moments before battle, of being on the point of whirling into the never-ending cycle of death, transformation, and rebirth. All around me in the darkness, I could hear whispered prayers, and I could guess that many of our soldiers were using their thumbs to trace circles of rebirth onto their own foreheads. 

I wondered whether the Mippite soldiers were doing this as well, as they kept their lonely watch. Many of them shared our faith. 

Imagination is a disadvantage to a soldier. I was still musing upon the Mippite soldiers' fear when a shout came from ahead, in the Mippite tongue: "Who's there?" As a result, I might well have been caught off-guard; but Fairview, having brought his line close to mine during this final stretch of the march, pulled me to the ground. Beside me and behind me, I heard the thump of several hundred soldiers dropping to their stomachs, in accordance with Tice's prior instructions. 

A split second later came the crackle of the Mippites' rifles and pistols, like fire spreading across sun-dried grass. Bullets whizzed over our heads. We waited until the clicking of the bolts told us that the Mippites had emptied their rifles and pistols. Then— 

"The Bay!" cried the General, and we surged forward. 

The taking of the summit was quick and relatively bloodless; the Mippites, faced with the sight of over a thousand enemy soldiers, wisely fled. 

"Three of my men are wounded," reported Tice afterwards as Doyle lit a shuttered lantern for us. "Also, one of theirs is dead. I think we chased all the rest away." 

I nodded. Nearby, at the instruction of the General, our men were giving three cheers – the easiest way to alert the Landsteader soldiers who had remained at the foot of Spy Hill that we had won the summit. 

"Sir," said Tice, saluting as the General approached, "would you like me to send my scouts forward to check the remaining lay of the summit?" 

The General shook his head. He was smiling broadly for once, waving his cap against his face as though to disperse the light drizzle that had soaked us to the skin. "Time enough for that, once the mist lifts. I think one of the Mippites escaped further along the summit; I don't want your scouts, blinded by the mist, to run into Mippite rifles." 

"Sir, with respect, it would help to know—" 

In retrospect, I should have cut to the quick and said, "We can't be sure we've won the summit until we see where the summit lies." Instead, my attempts to contradict the General with circumspection worked against me; the General took on that familiar look of obduracy. He snapped, "That's enough talk. I've made my decision, Colonel Rook. Major Spearman—" He turned to address the engineer, who was silently listening to this conversation. "Have your men start the entrenchment." 

"Yes, sir," Spearman replied patiently; I could hear his sappers already at work nearby, digging trenches along the lines he had immediately laid out, once we won the summit. "May I ask, sir, where the sandbags are?" 

"Sandbags?" The General looked blank. 

"We passed a pile of them on the way out of our camp," Tice reminded him. 

"You told me, sir, that each of the men on this march was to carry a sandbag, but I don't see any evidence of the sandbags." Spearman fingered the chain of his wedding pocket-watch, that tiny movement being the only sign of the extent of his concern. 

"I—" The General choked on the next word. It was undoubtedly "forgot." But he regained his composure quickly and said with firmness, "I decided they weren't necessary." 

"Yes, sir?" Spearman kept his voice mild. "Well, we'll make do with what materials we have. I'm afraid that most of the rocks here are too big to be moved, but they're also too small to form shelter. We'll just have to dig deep enough to form an adequate protection." 

I glanced over at one of the sappers. He had dug only a few inches, but already he was cursing at the rock below the surface. 

Doyle, who had never learned to keep quiet during officers' conferences, said, "There's a right big stand of rocks over here for your own shelter, General." 

"Facing which way?" I asked quickly. 

Doyle grinned. "Best ways of all: northeast. You want to come see it, General?" 

"Yes, show it to me," said the General with vague approval. 

I looked over at Fairview, who had just joined us. He shook his head gravely. Even Doyle had grasped the dangers that might come from the unexplored north and east. Why couldn't the General grasp this? 

"Hmph," said Spearman, providing an inarticulate commentary on the conversation. "I'd best get back to work." 

I looked around. In the small area that was lit by the lamp, I could see my men, resting now that the summit was won. They'd have been better put to use in digging the trenches, but there were no sandbags and no shovels or picks except the ones that had been carried by the sappers, and my men's entrenching tools were inadequate for digging in this hard ground – I'd tested the tools myself, in the minutes following our attack. Besides, most of the enlisted men were too bone-weary to move. 

"Ain't no way to run a war," said Fairview in my ear, imitating Doyle. I laughed and went off to consult with Spearman over whether any fresh water could be found on this hill.


	5. Are, I Hope, Secure

> _Written dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 6 AM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "Sir, 
> 
> "We got up about four o'clock, and rushed the position with three men wounded. There were some Mippites, who seemed surprised, and bolted firing a round or so, having one man killed. I believe there is another somewhere, but have not found him in the mist. The latter did us well, and I pushed on a bit quicker than I perhaps should otherwise have done, lest it should lift before we got here. We have entrenched a position, and are, I hope, secure; but the fog is too thick to see, so I retain the engineers for a bit longer. My men attacked in fine style. I had a noise made later to let you know that we had got in. 
> 
> "Yours &c., 
> 
> "R. Talbert Pentheusson."

  
o—o—o

"Way I figure it," said Doyle, pausing to lean on his shovel, "the officers have all forgotten 'bout the cycle." 

It was dawn; the air around us was milk-white with mist. Most of the soldiers, having spent the remaining night resting from our climb, were lingering over their morning rations. After consulting with Spearman, I'd sent a few of my own men to take over the trench-digging duties of the sappers, who were exhausted after their own night's work. The sappers were taking their morning meal now, while my men grumbled about being deprived of their breakfast. 

The director of their grumbles was clear enough. 

"Now, we was all officers once," said Doyle, continuing to idle at his task. "All of us. Stands to reason. They tell us in chapel: we all rise up, and we all go low down, just like boats bobbing in the Bay. And when we're up, we done got to remember that we'll be down one day. But these officers, they're forgetting. They're thinking, 'We have blue uniforms, so we'll always be the best.' But they won't. They'll die, and they'll become us." 

The other men nodded; they'd all stopped work now to listen to Doyle. "Honey boy, you got the right of it," said Lexington, one of my best privates, who had been one of my best watermen in past years. "Ain't nobody knows what they'll be in the future. Ain't nobody knows what they've been in the past—" 

"'Less they seen it," added Fulton, wiping his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. "Cycle forward and cycle back." 

"I'm telling you." Doyle nodded vigorously. "Them officers, they ought to be plain feared, knowing they'll be enlisted men in some future life. Even if they don't see cycle forward or cycle back, they got their faith, right? They know that the cycle of rebirth will bring them low some day." 

There was a murmur of agreement all around as several men laid down their shovels. I surmised that it was time I took official notice of the strike. Stepping forward, I said, "I couldn't agree with you more, Doyle." 

"Hey?" He twisted around, looking confused. 

"We all go down, and we all go up," I said. "And the determinant of whether we go up is whether we do our duty." I turned my scrutiny on the other men, who looked abashed. Lexington quickly picked up the shovel he'd laid aside. He was a good man, though easily led into trouble by other soldiers, for he was an orphan; he considered the men in my battalion his only family. 

Doyle merely shrugged. "But what if the officers ain't doing their duty to care for us? Why should we follow their orders then?" 

There was a pause again as the trench-digging party awaited my answer. I could see that some of my other men were listening in. 

"Why," I said, "if we're given an order by an officer who fails to do his duty, we just keep doing our own duty, which is to obey orders. Then, in the next life, when we're above that officer, we can order him to dig trenches." 

Doyle scowled. The other men laughed. Fulton shyly offered me a drink from his water bottle. I waved away his offer with a smile. I didn't want to tell him that I was worried about the water arrangements. There was no spring on the summit; Spearman had sent several of his engineers to the western foot of the hill to ascertain whether any water could be found there. 

Still scowling, Doyle finished the trenchwork assigned to him, threw down his shovel, and stalked off to a nearby bush. A moment later, when I glanced back at the bush, it was shaking. 

I looked quickly around, but Davey was watching the signalmen as they set up their station near the western crest, my messenger-lad was safely tucked into his cot at the camp, the General's messenger-lad rarely strayed from his side, and Tice had no messenger-lad, for Eighth Landstead soldier-servants did double duty as couriers. 

To my thinking, all of the other soldiers here were welcome to let Doyle show him his "guidebook," if they wanted. But the men digging the trenches showed no inclination to follow Doyle into his hideaway. They were whispering amongst themselves; finally Fulton got up the courage to be their spokesman. 

"Sir," he said, "may I ask you a question?" 

"Certainly," I replied, bracing myself for whatever demands Doyle had convinced them they should make. 

"Why don't they just give up, sir?" 

"They?" I raised my eyebrows in a not-very-credible imitation of Fairview. 

"The Mippites, sir. See, we got thousands of soldiers—" 

"Twenty thousand," contributed Lexington, who was always ready with exact numbers, having tallied many an oyster barrel in his day. 

"And the Mippites got—" Fulton looked to Lexington. 

"Two thousand men," said Lexington promptly. "And we've got fifty big guns, while they've got seven. We've had some bad luck so far," he said, phrasing the General's bungling politely. "But we're sure to win this battle today. Stands to reason, as Doyle would say. So why don't the Mippites just give up?" 

All around him, my men were nodding. I paused as I tried to think of a way to answer my men's question without revealing my own fears. From where I stood, facing south, I could see, out of the corner of my eye, a gold disk swimming in the mist: the sun, beginning to rise above the horizon. 

"Well, Fulton," I finally replied, "do you know who is leading the Mippite forces here?" 

Fulton shoveled out another scoop of dirt before coming up with the answer. "General Starke, ain't it, sir?" 

"And who is General Starke? —Anyone?" I looked around at the other men. 

As I might have expected, Biddle was the one to reply. He had married above himself, with the result that his wife and children were much better educated than he was. A modest man, he took great pride in the accomplishments of his wife and children. His wife had taught him to read and write, so he was usually better informed than the other men, who depended on their officers to supply them with information on political matters. Fiddling with the chain of his engraved wedding pocket-watch now, he said, "General Starke . . . would that be _Duke_ Starke, sir?" 

"Prescott Starke, Duke of Howard," I agreed. "General Starke's estate is in eastern Mip, but he has blood ties with the aristocrats in this area – all of the Mippite aristocrats are related to each other, if you trace their lines far enough back. Not only that, but Lord Starke's cousin is a magisterial seat – what we would call a High Master," I added, seeing the men's blank looks. "All of this territory we've been travelling through is like a landstead, with its own High Master and its own lesser masters – elected officials, since the Mippites abolished hereditary titles at the time they founded their republic, but the old aristocrats still hold loyalty. All of the Mippites we're facing in battle today have ties of faithfulness to General Starke or to his relations. General Starke's nephews both lead commandos, while his younger brother—" 

"So the Mippites think we're trespassing," interrupted Fulton. Fulton was earnest, eager to please, and forever breaking military protocol. He would apologize with great sincerity afterwards for his error, and then make another mistake the next day. My men loved him, as they would have loved a youngest brother; he was the favorite of my battalion. 

I remained silent a moment, to alert Fulton to the fact that he should not interrupt his colonel. He dipped his eyes and murmured an apology. The other men drilled their gazes into me, daring me to punish him. 

But I was fond of Fulton also, in a distant sort of way, so I said, "Exactly so, private. From the Mippites' point of view, we have invaded their home – worse, we and our armies in the east have invaded their dukes' homes. Hence their eagerness to escort us back over the river." 

The men chuckled. Judging that they were now in a good enough mood to finish their work without delay, I said, "So let's make sure we're well entrenched. Hurry now to finish. And remember – we all get our opportunity to rise to higher ranks. Let's be as faithful to our officers as the Mippites are to theirs. Obedience to orders is the way to win this war." 

"A proper speech to give one's men," murmured a voice in my ear as my men turned their attention back to their work. "But is it the truth?" 

I looked over at Fairview. He was covered with dirt from inspecting the central, main trench. I glanced at the right flank's trench – my own trench, which was to the right of Fairview's main trench. My trench was no deeper than Fairview's – just a light scratching in the ground, shielded by a few rocks. 

"How many prayers do you know?" I replied. 

He laughed, wiping his hands clean on the cloth that his soldier-servant had just handed him. "By this time in life? A thousand prayers for safety in battle. How are matters going here?" 

"We're almost finished." I waved my hand toward where my men were industriously completing the right flank's trench, other than Doyle, who had returned from the bush to harangue the other enlisted men for following the orders of officers who didn't care about them. I glanced around, but Doyle's sergeant had walked over to the dressing station to check on arrangements there for the care of the wounded. I noticed, with a wince, that the General had ordered the dressing station placed to the north. 

Fairview noticed the wince and said in a low voice, "It may be all right. We may be imagining the worst." 

"Better that, than ignoring the possibility of the worst. —All right, Canton," I said to my own soldier-servant. "You can have your breakfast now. Just send word first to the General that we're nearly finished here. —Where is Tice?" I asked Fairview. 

Fairview pointed his thumb. "Gone to beg the General again to let him send out scouts." 

I looked toward the General's rock. Tice was talking animatedly; the General looked stone-faced. 

I sighed and turned away. "Everything's ready where you are?" 

"Everything's fine," replied Fairview; then, seeing my men nudge each other knowingly, he sighed too. "Come see," he suggested. 

I don't know how it is in other nations' armies. I've heard that the Mippites, all egalitarians at heart, would hardly blink if a private chewed out his colonel, or if a lesser-ranked colonel failed to address a higher-ranked colonel as "sir." 

Matters work differently in the armies of the Dozen Landsteads. True, we no longer have tens of thousands of different words for soldiers' ranks, each word invented especially for one man. I was no longer "Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Roman Rook, Ranked Just Below Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Fairview." We'd given up such complex titles, because they confused foreigners. 

But within the Dozen Landsteads, such ranks still exist. When I first joined the Ninth Landstead's military forces after university, I was tattooed with a number that represented my rank in the Ninth Landstead's military: the thirteenth minute of the sixth hour of the first day of the seventh month of the sun-cycle of the year in which I joined. Fairview's tattoo showed that he was two minutes higher-ranked than I was. We had flipped a coin to decide which of us stood before the other in the recruitment queue. 

When the decision was made for a war alliance with the other landsteads, there had been a tedious process of cross-checking rank records with the other landsteads to determine that nobody held the exact same rank. Nobody did; the recruiting offices of the various landstead military forces deliberately stagger their schedules to prevent anyone from joining the military at the exact same moment that anyone else does. As a result, I was still ranked directly below Fairview; no other officer in the Allied Armies was ranked between us. 

Not that any of this had ever made any difference to Fairview and me. We made our decisions the way we always had: jointly. Sometimes, in the darkness of night, I had wondered what would happen if one of us was promoted in the field. But in the daytime, I had a bigger problem to worry about: Doyle. 

Thanks to Doyle's insinuations, everyone in our brigade joked that Fairview and I made our decisions jointly because we were love-mates. Thankfully, the General, unlike other officers we'd suffered under, had not objected to our companionable manner of working. These days, our problems arose from the reactions of our men. Disconcerted by our unconventional manner of sharing responsibilities, but unwilling, through their loyalty, to rebel in any overt form, Fairview's men and mine turned their bewilderment into satire. Everywhere Fairview and I went these days, there were winks and sniggers and stares. The only thing worse would have been if we had presented the men with actual proof that Fairview and I did more than share a tent in a chaste manner. 

I wondered sometimes – on those same dark nights – whether affairs might have gone differently between Fairview and me if we hadn't made the mistake of adopting Doyle as our pet troublemaker. Certainly our friendship had satisfied us to the full in the past. Any man who thinks that friendship is not true love has never possessed a true friend. 

But men spin in the cycle of transformation and rebirth. Nothing stays still; all changes. The scientists in the First Landstead are proving this to be true, with their talk of evolution. 

If Doyle had not been there, turning the love between Fairview and me into a source of filthy jokes, what evolutions might have occurred in our lives? Where would we be now, if we had been spared Doyle's presence? 

As I walked across the summit with Fairview, I turned my attention back to the trenches. Though the trenches were exceedingly shallow, Spearman had laid them out properly, with one long main trench and two shorter trenches jutting back diagonally from the main trench, like the wings of a barn swallow in flight. 

We'd had some discussions about those trenches. Tice was considerably senior to Fairview and me in army years, and so, by right of rank, Tice ought to have received the honor of holding the main trench. That was what the General had planned. 

But Tice had demurred when the time came to position our men, saying that the greater privilege lay in holding the left flank's trench to the northeast, since this was the direction from which an attack was most likely to come. Fairview and I were skeptical about Tice's motives. Now, as my officers paced up and down amongst the enlisted men, I tried to figure out how Tice's position would be an advantage to him, if he chose to betray us Ninth Landsteaders to the Mippites. 

But it was true enough that Fairview's men were better suited for the main trench. In conformity with last-minute orders from the General, Fairview had brought six companies of his battalion with him, while I had brought only two, and Tice was accompanied by a mere one hundred of his men. Tice's Mounted Infantry and my 2nd Ninth fit nicely into the shorter wings of entrenchment, while Fairview's men were able to spread out in the main trench. 

Not that there was much room for spreading; the men were as tightly packed in the trenches as sardines in a tin. I wondered uneasily where the General would put the reinforcements, should they be needed. As the dawn brought milk-white light to the mist, it had become clear that the Mippites had left behind very few of the stone shelters they favored for defensive purposes. As Spearman had said, the rocks on this hillside were mainly too heavy to move. There was scarcely a tree or bush here; the hill had evidently been cleared at the time it was made a quarry. Though the old quarry had disappeared, the vegetation had not returned. Perhaps this hill was kept as a sighting post in peacetime. 

What all this meant was that our ill-made trenches were practically the only thing protecting us from any Mippites who chose to attack us – that, and the height of the hill. We would at least be in the favorable position of looming over the enemy. 

As we reached the main trench, I bent down on one knee to inspect it. The stone breastwork that Spearman's sappers had built in front of the main trench – and in front of the right-flank and left-flank trenches – reached no more than a hand's span toward the sky. 

"We'll be on our bellies if anyone shoots at us," said Major Arundel, Tice's second-in-command, who had come over to see how the other two battalions were doing. "Still, these stones are solid enough. They should do their work in shielding us, since the Mippites will have to shoot at us from far down on the slope. We should be able to kill any attackers before they come near enough to harm us." He glanced over his shoulder. Tice had evidently given up on swaying the General; he had stepped away from the General's rock, disgust on his face. To my dismay, I saw that the General was sitting in his field-chair now, smoking a cigarette and reading a book of poetry. 

"I heard a rumor that his father forced him into the army," said Arundel, shaking his head. "He didn't want to be a soldier at all; he wanted to work for peace between Mip and the Dozen Landsteads, through the High Masters' diplomatic office." 

"Even so," said Fairview, "he knows how to shoot a gun. I've seen him." 

"Oh, yes, sir; he received military training in school," said Arundel. "But knowing how to fire a gun and being willing to do so – that's another matter." 

Too many of Fairview's men were listening in on us; it would not do for them to think we had no faith in our General. I said stiffly, "It's not the General's job to shoot guns. His job is to issue orders." 

"That's so, sir," said Arundel, saluting me in acknowledgment of my reprimand. "If you'll excuse me, Colonel Fairview, Colonel Rook – I should be getting back to my men." 

"Prayers," murmured Fairview as he knelt down beside me to look at the shallow trench. It went down barely a foot before the sappers had hit rock. 

"How many prayers do you know?" I tried to smile. 

"Oh, plenty." Fairview turned to accept a sip of water from Davey, who was holding Fairview's water bottle. "When we joined the navy . . . Do you remember that day?" 

I nodded. "I was just remembering. We flipped to see who went first in line." 

Fairview laughed. "Did we? I'd forgotten that, after all these years. Well, the night before we joined, I went to my grandmama and asked her what advice she had for me. My grandpapa had been a soldier, and I thought she might have overheard him talking about military matters before he died." 

"Indeed?" I relaxed back onto my haunches. Around us, the enlisted men were tidying up after their breakfasts, while their officers checked to see that everyone's rifle was loaded, everyone's extra ammunition was at hand. In the dressing station, doctors and their assistants carried out final preparations. There was no sign yet of the stretcher-bearers and water-carriers, though I knew that Fairview had sent orders for their arrival, after he discovered that the General had neglected this task. 

Fairview nodded, pushing back his helmet. The morning sun was growing brighter; an occasional bird flew past us, chirping brightly. Otherwise, all I could hear was the equally bright chatter of our men. "She taught me as many battle prayers as she could recall, and then she said, 'Alec my boy, the most important thing to remember is to put your affairs in good order before you go into battle. It's no use worrying about your affairs, once battle has begun. You need to do beforehand everything that needs to be done. The Fates get awfully annoyed at you if you arrive in afterdeath and tell them you've forgotten to do something. It's like leaving a stove fire going when you depart the house." 

Fairview's messenger-lad put his hand over his mouth to smother his titter. I laughed outright. "And have you followed her advice?" 

Fairview gave a quirk of a smile. "I suppose not. I've always been poor at tending to needed tasks." 

"You're not the one who needs to make that confession." I frowned as I glanced back at the right flank. All seemed in order among my soldiers; the officers, good men, had noticed the brightening light and were urging the enlisted men into position in the trenches. It occurred to me, as I looked around, that Fairview's men were already in position, as were Tice's. 

It was true enough, that Fairview and I made decisions jointly. But I had always been a bit slower than him in thinking matters through. The result of this was that, time after time, Fairview had acted first, and I had followed in his wake. It was the only flaw in our otherwise flawless friendship. 

I looked over at Fairview again, and was surprised to see that he too was frowning. "Is something on your mind?" I asked. With one hand, I indicated the scene before us. 

"The fighting, you mean? No. We've done everything we can to prepare, given our orders. It's just . . . Well, this isn't the place to talk about it, I suppose. Big ears." He looked over at Davey, who had been leaning in to listen. The lad blushed and ducked his head. Fairview laughed and patted him on the shoulder. 

"Sir!" It was Branchwater, Fairview's second-in-command. "The mist is lifting!" 

Fairview and I rose to our feet. Everywhere, despite the orders to entrench, men were standing up, trying to peer through the pale veil that was lifting as we watched. Whiteness turned to green and brown; I saw spread before us the lower ground that led to Fort Frederick. It was dotted with soldiers, many of them clustered near a creek at the foot of Spy Hill. Some of the soldiers below were already climbing. 

My eyes rose further up. To the northeast I could see a magnificent range: the highest mountains I'd spied yet in Mip. And to our left, barely six hundred yards away, was the knoll to the north of Spy Hill. Light glimmered on rifle barrels there. 

"Sweet blood," whispered Fairview. It was a prayer. 

Then came a boom from Fairview Mountain, and the creek shook. Every man on the summit fell to his stomach. 

The Mippite gunners had found us.


	6. Can Barely Hold My Own

> _Heliograph dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 8:30 AM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "Am exposed to terrible cross-fire; can barely hold my own; water badly needed. Help us. 
> 
> "Pentheusson."

  
o—o—o

"Fifteen hundred yards: rifle-fire, coming from Fairview Mountain," said Fairview, flat on his belly with his spy-glass to his eye. "Pom-poms, also from Fairview Mountain – about twenty-five hundred yards from us. The shell guns on Fairview Mountain are about two miles away. Directly north from the knoll: machine-rifles. And that eastern ledge that's just below the summit has several dozen Mippites shooting up at us." 

Fairview, the steamer pilot, had the best eyes of anyone I knew, and the best ears too. Even so, I said, "Below us? Are you sure?" 

I had to shout; we both did. All around us came the scream of shells and the scream of men being hit by shells and rifle-fire. Fairview didn't waste words; he handed the spy-glass to me and pointed to a rock further down the slope. 

I took the spy-glass reluctantly. The news was depressing enough as it was, for the Mippites' rifles could hit us easily from Fairview Mountain, while our rifles simply weren't accurate at that range. As for the Mippites' pom-poms, I longed to wring the necks of whichever penny-greedy bureaucrats had decided that the Landsteader armies didn't need the Vovimian-manufactured automatic cannons. The Mippites had promptly bought every pom-pom. 

Sighing, I looked through the spy-glass. For a moment I saw nothing. Then there was a flicker of motion, a discharge, a bullet whizzing past my ear. 

"Blast!" I handed the spy-glass back to Fairview. "They must be within a hundred yards of us." I looked around, but Canton wasn't in view; in any case, this called for a conference. "I'll tell the General," I informed Fairview and scrambled out of the trench before he should demand we flip a coin to decide who left. 

Not that the trenches made a bloody bit of difference, as far as I could tell. As Spearman had hinted to the General, shallow trenches are little better than no trenches at all. From the knoll to the north came the rattle of the Mippites' machine-rifles, and the result was like watching a lawn mowed; bullets landed in a strip down the trench to the north of me – not the one I had just left, thank goodness. I could hear Fairview shouting orders behind me. 

Closing my ears to the screams of the unfortunate men in Tice's left-flank trench, I scrambled forward on hands and knees, unwilling to rise high enough that I should become a handy target. I heard a scream above me – not from a man – and fell flat on my belly, hiding my face in my arms. 

There was an awful crash above me, and then, far more terrible, the sound of metal striking rocks, like a deadly rain. The screams were starting again. I waited tensely, but felt nothing more than a fiery line across the back of my hand. 

I raised my head finally. The first thing I saw was blood welling out of my hand, from where shrapnel had slashed it. Cursing, I rolled over and managed to pull out my handkerchief, then used my teeth and my good hand – my shooting hand – to wrap the handkerchief around the wounded hand. 

All around me was shrapnel, along with the shattered remains of the men who had experienced the explosion of a shell. Near me was the severed head of Canton. I turned my eyes away, struggled to regain control of my stomach, and then scrambled to my feet and ran. Trying to travel by hands and knees through a field filled with shell fragments is as good as suicide. 

As I'd predicted, I became the new, favorite target of the Mippites. By the time I reached the General, I'd lost my rations packet; it had been shot off my belt. I collapsed behind the rock where the General huddled, along with his soldier-servant and his wide-eyed messenger-lad, who was just finishing writing down a message for the signalmen. The lad looked at what lay between him and the signal station, gulped, and then scrambled out into the deathly field. 

The General took no notice of his messenger's departure. Sweat covered the General's face, which had gone pale. He was clutching his book of poetry and staring at the mangled remains of Tice, who lay nearby. 

"Sir," I said in a voice that trembled only slightly, "I have a report for you on the enemy positions." I rattled off the information that Fairview had given me. 

The General continued to stare at Tice's corpse. 

"Sir, if we ask the Commander-in-Chief to send word to our gunners, I believe they can put the machine-rifles on the knoll out of commission – our big guns are within range. . . . Sir?" 

The General raised his gaze finally. His eyes were wide, like that of a warhorse which smells blood for the first time. "Return to your men," he said. 

"But sir, about the knoll—" 

"I said, _Return to your men!_ " He shrieked the words. His voice was nearly hidden by the booming of the Mippite guns. 

"Well?" said Fairview, pausing in the midst of giving half a dozen orders to his subordinate officers, who were gathered around him. 

I didn't bother to keep my voice low this time. "He wouldn't listen to a bloody word I said!" 

Fairview paused, not to consider what to say next, but because we both had to flatten ourselves at that moment as another rake of rifle-fire went by us. "Tice?" 

"Dead. Spearman is wounded; I saw him being carried off the hill by his men." 

"Well, then, it's just us left. —Stiles, inform Major Arundel of Colonel Tice's death and tell him that he's in charge now of the left flank. Branchwater, have your men close up that gap caused by the shell-deaths; if the Mippites on the hillside below us attack at bayonet range, the center is where they're most likely to charge. How much water do we have?" 

Fairview's cool enquiry brought me back to my senses. "Not enough. —Gillingham." I turned to my own second-in-command, who had followed me to the main trench. "Have the men save their water for the wounded. I don't know when we'll be getting our next supply. Also, they're to hold their fire unless they actually see something worth shooting at. Our ammunition won't last forever." 

"Here." Fairview had been scribbling in his notebook while I spoke; he tore off the page and handed it to Davey. "Give this to the signalmen. Have them send it to the Commander-in-Chief at once." 

Davey didn't so much as blink, good lad that he was. "Shall I say that our General handed this to me?" 

"Send it without a name; if anyone asks, the General is currently incapacitated. —For how long?" he asked in an undertone as Davey darted away. 

I shook my head wordlessly. 

"We need him in charge." Fairview glanced around as his officers scattered, returning to their companies. "I'll go this time." 

"We both will. I gave orders to my officers on my way back here. I've done everything I can for the moment." 

We found the General standing at the farthest end of the left flank's trench, staring down at the mangled, moaning men there. 

"Sir, get down!" urged Fairview. Like me, he had wriggled the final yards to the General on his belly; the rifle-fire had intensified, and the Mippites were showing what fine marksmen they were. One Mippite rifleman in particular – a field-cornet, I judged from what I had glimpsed of his ragged hat, which was rank-coded blue – seemed to bring down a man on our side every time he fired his rifle. 

The General ignored us. Again. "I've sent a message to the Commander-in-Chief, requesting water," he told one of the moaning soldiers, who was clutching what I recognized as our General's own water bottle. "You'll just have to wait, I'm afraid. —Here." He leaned over to offer his cigarette to the man. 

It was a ridiculous scene. The General should have been issuing orders, not handing out cigarettes to dying men. But in that moment, as I witnessed the man who had wanted a quiet diplomatic job step out of the safety of his rock in order to comfort a dying man, I felt the first stirrings of admiration toward Pentheusson. 

From the corner of my eye, I saw a blue cloth blur as the Mippite officer steadied his rifle. The rifle roared.


	7. Or All is Lost

> _Heliograph dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 9 AM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead. 
> 
> "Fairview."

  
o—o—o

"He's not dead!" shouted the General's soldier-servant. "Sir, he's not dead!" 

"What?" 

I had to shout at the top of my lungs over the cacophony of noise on the summit. I had thought that, as a waterman, I was accustomed to loud sounds, having been caught in far too many storms on the Bay and at sea. But none of that compared to what I was experiencing now: the staccato shout of the machine-rifles, the screams of the shells, the whining of the shrapnel, the crack of rifle bullets rebounding off rocks— 

—the cries of dying men. Always that. 

Amidst all this, I thought I could hear faintly the shouts of Fairview, as he issued further orders. I had been in agony for the past couple of minutes, watching him dart his way across the battlefield. Now he crouched in the almost-as-deadly main trench. 

"The General isn't dead, sir!" the soldier-servant bellowed. 

I managed to tear my attention away from Fairview. He and I, with the help of the General's soldier-servant, had managed to drag the General's body back to the shelter of the rock. All of us had assumed that the General was dead; he had blood across his face. But now, as I made my way over to where the General's soldier-servant and newly returned messenger-lad knelt by his sides, I saw that the General was indeed alive. The bullet had landed in his shoulder, and the blood from the shoulder had spattered onto his face. 

He was moaning, trying to rock himself back and forth; the soldier-servant was hard-pressed to keep him lying still. I glanced at the wound; blood was still welling out of it. I knew a little first aid, but not enough to deal with a wound like this. 

I looked in an automatic manner toward the dressing station, which the General had located behind one of the few stone shelters that the Mippites had left behind. Then I looked again. The dressing station was gone. All that remained were fragments of bone and flesh and fabric. A shell had hit it. 

I looked, not very hopefully, toward the western slope of the hill; we were not expecting the stretcher-bearers to arrive for another hour. But there they were, peering over the crest of the summit. 

I saw the head stretcher-bearer among them, and I waved my hand energetically. He did not hesitate. He said something to his men; two of them trotted over the crest, holding a stretcher. 

And were immediately shot down. One minute, there were stretcher-bearers; the next minute, there were only corpses. 

The head stretcher-bearer was a man of grit. After a moment's hesitation, he gave new orders; a second pair of stretcher-bearers darted forward to take up the burden. 

They made it halfway to the General's rock before a shell hit them. 

In despair, I looked down at the General. His eyes were open but were wide with pain; I didn't think he could see me. Blood continued to seep out of his wound. His soldier-servant and messenger-lad were dabbing at it in an ineffectual manner which suggested that they had no more experience at first aid than I did. 

And then – lo, the courage of men! – help arrived, in the form of the head stretcher-bearer and one of his men. I had not even thought to look for assistance from that quarter again, but the two men had braved the crossfire to reach the General. The head stretcher-bearer knelt down; without awaiting instructions, he pulled out a roll of cloth and began bandaging the General's shoulder. 

I watched, fascinated. I could not believe that Healer Mahone had entrusted the colonials with medical supplies; the stretcher-bearers' job was simply to take the wounded to the field hospital, after the dressing station on the hill had done its work. But it seemed that the stretcher-bearers were better prepared than any of the rest of us for this crisis. 

"Good man!" I cried, so much overcome by gratitude that I thumped the head stretcher-bearer on his back. "You're a credit to your empire!" 

The head stretcher-bearer gave me an opaque look and then returned to his work. It occurred to me that, even supposing he understood the tongue that the Dozen Landsteads and Yclau share, he might be somewhat less than enthusiastic at the idea of being praised for his participation in an empire that had colonized his land through force. Indeed, he might even sympathize with the Mippites in this conflict. 

If so, he did not allow his political views to muddle his work. When the bandages were in place, he and his fellow colonial lifted the General onto the stretcher. They did so gently, but the pain of movement cut through the General's grogginess. He half sat up and looked around, his eyes blinking. 

I knelt next to him. "Sir, you've been wounded," I informed him. "Don't worry; the stretcher-bearers are here. They'll take you to the field hospital." 

"No," he said hoarsely. "No! I must stay here! My men need me!" 

His messenger-lad stared open-mouthed. His soldier-servant, after a moment of shock, took on an expression of quiet pride. 

For the second time, I was filled with admiration for the General. But the practical part of my mind was running along different lines. 

"Yes, sir," I said, pushing him carefully down onto the stretcher. "Just as soon as the dressing station has tended your wound. We've moved the dressing station onto the western slope, because the crossfire here is too hot. Wait for the doctor to tend you; then you can return to your duties." 

For once, the General did not protest sensible advice. He closed his eyes, muttering something about his duty to his men. 

His soldier-servant, who had been in consultation with the head stretcher-bearer, now shouted in my ear – for whispers were impossible to hear under these circumstances – "Sir, the stretcher-bearers think it would be best to wait until new doctors arrive and examine him before moving him far. They suggest that they wait on the slope for the arrival of the rest of the medical corps that is supposed to help on the summit." 

"Very well!" I shouted back. "You go with him. Whatever happens, make sure he doesn't return to the summit." 

The soldier-servant gave me a long look, which suggested that he understood all the reasons why I was eager to remove the General from the summit. But he replied, "Yes, sir. The General has said himself, in the past, that a wounded man is a burden on the battlefield. I'll see that he gets the care he needs." He glanced at the bitter battlefield, took a deep breath, and then turned to give instructions for departure to the stretcher-bearers. 

Feeling something warm at my side, I looked down to see the General's messenger-lad kneeling next to me. "Shall I stay with you, sir?" 

"I'm leaving the safety of this rock in a minute," I warned him. 

"Yes, sir, I know. But you don't have a messenger here, and your soldier-servant is dead." He looked up at me earnestly. His face was green with fear. 

I had the sudden feeling of being surrounded by men and lads who all possessed more courage than I did. Well, the least I could do was to ensure that no more of them died than needed to. I straightened the lad's helmet, saying, "No, the General may have need of you. Don't worry; I'm capable of carrying my own messages." I gave him a smile and pushed him in the direction of the General. 

The soldier-servant beckoned him over, and then positioned him so that the lad would be mainly shielded by the soldier-servant's own body from the murderous crossfire from the north and east. The soldier-servant awaited my nod; then he gave a sharp order to the stretcher-bearers, and all of them began their journey past the gates of afterdeath. 

The Fates were evidently watching over them that day; they made it safely to the edge of the summit and disappeared over the crest. The other stretcher-bearers remained at the crest, but none ventured onto the field. I didn't blame them. I wished I could stay behind the General's rock. 

But Fairview needed me. 

Looking back on it, I can see how odd it was that I didn't think, _My men need me._ But that was how it had always been: my thoughts centered on Fairview's welfare. Oh, I knew, in a distant sort of way, that being an officer conferred certain duties upon me. I did my best to fulfill those duties, and I must have been successful to a certain extent, for my men liked me. But my thoughts were never really on them, except in a tangential way. That was part of the reason I found Doyle so irritating: he occupied much more of my time than I wished to devote to any of my men. 

And Fairview's perspective on this matter? I never knew. It was something we never talked about. Indeed, I didn't really understand what sort of soldier he was, until that day on Spy Hill. 

But I am getting ahead of myself. There I was, standing behind the General's rock, where I didn't belong. And there was Fairview, out in the main trench . . . where he didn't belong. Somehow, I had to reach him. 

Try to understand, if you can, what lay between us. Not simply bullets, shrapnel, shells – all the ways in which modern man has learned to tear apart a living body. What lay between us was bodies. Bodies of men I had known and fought alongside, not only in the army, but in some cases in the navy as well. Bodies ripped apart and shredded across the field. To reach Fairview, I would have to pass the mangled remains of Canton. It is one thing to see momentarily the sundered body of a young man who has tended you day and night for months. It is quite another thing to deliberately crawl past his corpse, thinking all the time of how he died as a result of an errand you sent him upon. 

These are the times that test men's faith. Did I, or did I not, believe that men pass through death into a better life? Well, I did and I didn't. And as it happened, I was closer to the truth than I knew. 

At any rate, I journeyed safely to Fairview. He was no longer surrounded by officers; his officers, and mine, and Major Arundel's, were all busy trying to keep the ragged remnants of our brigade from disintegrating. As of yet, we had made no push against the Mippites, but I knew that would come soon. 

I dropped into the trench just as young Davey, white-faced, hurtled out of the trench and struggled his way toward the signalmen, who had set up their heliograph in the pre-dawn hours and were now tending the flame, wiping down the mirror that reflected the flame, checking the colored transparencies that would be used to send the color-coded messages. They were intent on their duties, paying no attention to the bullets whistling past them. Once more, I was filled with the awareness of being surrounded by soldiers who were greater than myself. 

"I was beginning to worry that you weren't coming," said Fairview, keeping his voice light. 

"I apologize for the delay. It turns out that the General is alive." I gave Fairview the rest of the news. 

"Blast." Fairview ran a hand over his forehead. "I just sent a message to the Commander-in-Chief, requesting reinforcements and informing him that his son-in-law was dead." 

I looked over at the signalmen. One of them was sending the message. I knew the color code by heart, of course, and I surmised that the signalmen weren't quite so fearless as they appeared. The message being sent sounded as though it had been reworded by an unnerved signalman; "All is lost" were not words in Fairview's vocabulary, even as a looming possibility. 

"You could send another message," I suggested, and then fell flat on my stomach, shielding my head. The signal station was quite close, and the glass shards from the broken mirror were spraying everywhere. 

"Perhaps not for a while," Fairview replied dryly as he and I and the other men around us picked ourselves up. "Stiles, go see how many of the signalmen were wounded or killed by that shell. Davey appears unhurt, but make sure he gets back here safely." 

"Yes, sir," responded Fairview's soldier-servant, and promptly darted off. Fairview's gaze followed him longer than it needed to. It struck me that Fairview must be aware that there was no one left to countermand his orders, should he make a foolish one. 

His eyes met mine. I was silent. We seemed held in a space of time that lasted an eternity. 

Or perhaps it only seemed that way because of what followed.


	8. Streams of Wounded

> _Account by a Landsteader war correspondent of his climb up Spy Hill during the battle:_
> 
> "Streams of wounded obstructed the path. Men were staggering along alone, or supported by comrades, or crawling on hands and knees, or carried on stretchers. Corpses lay here and there. The splinters and fragments of the shell had torn and mutilated. I passed about two hundred while I was climbing up. 
> 
> "There was, moreover, a small but steady leakage of unwounded men. Some of these cursed and swore. Others were utterly exhausted and fell on the hillside in stupor. Others again seemed drunk, though they had had no liquor. Scores were sleeping heavily. Fighting was still proceeding, and stray bullets struck all over the ground, while the shell guns scourged the flanks of the hill and the sheltering infantry at regular intervals of a minute. 
> 
> "One thing was clear – unless good and efficient cover could be made, and unless guns could be dragged to the summit of the hill to match the Mippite artillery, the infantry could not, perhaps would not, endure. The human machine will not stand certain strains for long."

  
o—o—o

"We can't reach the Mippite sharpshooters on the ledge! Our trenches are too far from the eastern crest – most of the sharpshooters are hidden from our view!" 

"I know. Send some of your men forward to dig a new trench." 

_Machine-rifle fire sweeping the entire hill, enfilading the trenches, clearing the crest of living men. Sharpshooters killing whatever Landsteaders remained on the crest who weren't killed by the machine-rifle fire._

"I lost every man I sent." 

"I'm sorry. I'll send the main trench to attack the sharpshooters." 

"You'll send—? Blast it, no, Fairview! Don't lead the attack yourself!" 

_Attack. Clash. Struggle. Shouts. Blood. Retreat._

"Well, that didn't work." 

"Blast it, Fairview, we've already lost one general! We can't afford to lose you too!" 

"I'm short of officers." 

Silence. 

"Yes, half of mine are dead too." 

"Keep yourself safe, Rook." 

"Do I have a choice?" 

_Shrapnel, sending a shower of bullets onto the entire hill. Pom-pom shells screaming onto the survivors._

"We need water – the wounded are parched!" 

"The water-bearers can't reach us; nor the stretcher-bearers." 

"The trenches are beginning to overflow with the dead. And in this heat—" 

"Putrefaction. I know. We'll just have to wait for a let-up in the crossfire." 

"Wait for a miracle, you mean?" 

_Screams from the shells. Screams from the men. Hard sobbing. Moans. Prayers. Yipping. Yipping?_

"Doyle, how the bloody blades did that spaniel get here?" 

"She followed me up the hill, Colonel, honest. No need to get testy. . . ." 

_Rotting bodies. Sweat. The stink from a young soldier who could not control his bladder. Fresh blood._

"Where the _fuck_ are the reinforcements?" 

"Watch your language around the men, Rook." 

"Sorry, sorry. But where are they? You asked the Commander-in-Chief for more men two hours ago. And why doesn't he do anything else to help us? He could attack their guns—" 

"His artillery has been trying to reach their artillery all morning; their shells have passed over us. Evidently the Commander-in-Chief's artillerymen can't see the Mippite guns. Remember, our hill is in the way." 

"Well, then, the Commander-in-Chief could create a diversion. Bloody blades, man, he has twenty thousand soldiers under his command. Why doesn't he _do_ something?" 

"He may not have received my message yet. You know what army communications are like." 

"Have you received any messages back from him?" 

"I'm not sure. I haven't had time to check with the signalmen— Oh, sweet blood, not again." 

_Attack from the sharpshooters. Try to push the Mippites back. They creep forward, taking five yards, ten yards, forty yards, sixty . . . They're within twenty yards now of our trenches._

"I don't care if you want to be with your men! You're a _general_ , Fairview! We need you behind the General's rock . . . sir." 

Silence. 

"Will you keep your head down, Rook?" 

"Believe me, Fairview, the only way I could keep my head any lower would be to burrow into the rock. Where are those bloody reinforcements?"


	9. This Terrible Day

> _Account by the field-cornet of the Mippite forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "Spy Hill, although steep, is not very high on the eastern slope where we went up, and it did not take us long to reach the top. Here we found that our advance had got no farther than the fringe of loose rocks that runs like a girdle around the upper tableland. For the rest of the flat stretch beyond was still wholly in the hands of the Landsteaders, who lay in a shallow trench behind a long low wall of stone about twenty yards away. From here came a vicious rifle-fire that made further progress impossible. 
> 
> "I met my brother coming down and gave him a hurried handshake, then went forward to the firing-line a few yards further on. We were sustaining heavy casualties from the Landsteader soldiers immediately in front of us, and the men grew restive under the galling point-blank fire, a thing not to be wondered at, for the moral effect of rifle volleys at twenty yards must be experienced to be appreciated. The Landsteader troops lay so near that one could have tossed a biscuit among them, and whilst the losses which they were causing us were only too evident, we on our side did not know that we were inflicting even greater damage upon them. Our own casualties lay hideously among us, but theirs were screened from view behind the breastwork, so the comfort of knowing that we were giving worse than we received was denied us. 
> 
> "The sun became hotter and hotter, and we had neither food nor water. Around us lay scores of dead and wounded men. As the hours dragged on a trickle of men slipped down the hill, and this gradual wastage so depleted our strength that long before nightfall we were holding the blood-splattered ledge with a mere handful of rifles. I wanted to go too, but the thought of Demas and my other men saved me from deserting. No further attempt was made to press forward, and for the rest of this terrible day both sides stubbornly held their ground, and, although the battle remained stationary, the heavy close-range rifle-fire continued hour after hour, and the tale of losses mounted while we lay in the blazing heat."

  
o—o—o

Bullets are not a soldier's worst enemy. Not bullets, nor the deadly thunderstorm of shrapnel, nor shells that smash a man's innards to pulp, nor machine-rifle fire that spears him in a dozen places. 

No, ask any soldier, and he'll tell you: far worse than weapon-fire is the fire of thirst. 

The mist had long since dissipated. The hill was hot, the grass so dry that it might never have been watered. It cut us as we scrambled across it. The summer sun licked us with its fiery lash. My mouth was a desert. I licked my dry lips with my dry tongue as sweat poured off my forehead. I resisted the temptation to lick the sweat. I was a waterman; I knew better than to try to quench my thirst with salt-water. 

All around me, as I wriggled my way across the ground, came the panting of men who were dry, who were hot, who were on the edge of passing out. None of us had eaten any food since dawn; we had been given no such leisure. And what water we had was going to the wounded, who lay beside us in the trenches, crying piteously or suffering in dreadful silence. 

"We can't go on like this," I told Fairview, when I had finally squirmed my way to the safety of the General's rock. "We _must_ have more water. A dozen of my men have heat-stroke – and we have no time to tend them." 

As I spoke, the sharp tat-tat-tat of the machine-rifles on the knoll began again. There were cries from the northeastern trench as the bullets ripped their way through the left flank. The northeastern trench, as Tice had promised, was enduring the worst of the casualties, but none of us were immune from the shells and shrapnel that were falling at us from the sky, nor from the carefully aimed bullets of the Mippite sharpshooters on the ledge. 

Fairview nodded. He looked weary beyond words. Three times he'd led attacks against the sharpshooters on the ledge, trying to drive them from the hill. Major Arundel, grimly holding together the scattered ruins of Tice's mounted infantry, had led two additional attacks. The faithfulness of him and his men made me ashamed of the suspicions that Fairview and I had held toward the Eighth Landstead's soldiers. 

But all of our work would be for nothing if our men passed out from lack of water. 

"The colonials are doing their best," replied Fairview, waving his hand toward the western edge of the summit, where several of the colonials crouched, waiting for a brief pause in the explosion of shells and bullets that continued on the summit. "But they're dying as quickly as our men are, whenever they try to deliver water to us or bring stretchers." 

"I know." I looked back at the battlefield. It was littered with dead men, dying men, and men who might be saved, if they could reach the hospital in time. The doctors at the field hospital – brave men, all of them – had sent up men to start a new dressing station. The Mippites had shelled that. Another doctor and his attendants had been sent; a third dressing station had been destroyed. Either the Mippites were unwilling to observe the common courtesies of warfare and spare the lives of medical men, or else – more likely – they simply couldn't distinguish between soldier and doctor from the distance of two miles at which they were shooting their shell guns. 

May the man who invented modern warfare be cursed. Battle was better in the old days, when you had to come within boarding distance of the boat you were shooting at, because the guns wouldn't shoot any further. 

I covered my handkerchief with sweat as I mopped at my throat; I'd long since removed my collar. A wind was beginning to blow from the south, but it barely seemed to make a difference. "What shall we do? It's hot as a Vovimian hell on this hill." 

"Reinforcements are coming." Fairview showed me the note from the Commander-in-Chief, scribbled in the hand of one of our signalmen, who was valiantly and fruitlessly trying to stand up long enough to send flag dispatches off the hill. Three signalmen had already died that way. 

"'I am sending two battalions, and the Fifth Light Infantry—' There's no mention here of water or ammunition or big guns." I scrutinized the Commander-in-Chief's bluntly worded message. 

"No. I don't know whether any of my messages have reached the Commander-in-Chief. I've received no word from him, other than this and a message that I'm in charge here. Rook, do you think—?" 

The scream of a shell obscured the remainder of Fairview's words. The shell passed inches from the General's rock and exploded several yards south of the right flank's trench. One of my soldiers, who had been raising his rifle up in an attempt to fire at the Mippite sharpshooters on the ledge, stared with a stupefied expression at where his rifle had been a moment before. His hand was gone as well. His eyes turned up in his face, and he fell backwards into the trench. 

I cursed and looked over at the stretcher-bearers. There might still be time to save Fulton; in such cases, sometimes the heat of the shell cauterizes the wound. But shrapnel was falling now on the field; the leader of the stretcher-bearers was holding back his men. 

I looked back at the right flank's trench. So shallow was it that I could see some of my men scrambling through the trench, trying to reach Fulton. They were blocked, not only by the dead and wounded men who had not yet been removed from the trench, but by soldiers who had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. 

Another shell landed near the right flank's trench, closer than the first; I heard cries as shell fragments shattered down onto the far end of the trench. The soldiers who had been trying to reach Fulton shrank back, then fell to their bellies as the remorseless machine-rifles turned their attention to that trench. 

At first it all seemed like a horrible coincidence, this outpouring of attention toward my flank by the Mippites. Then I saw something twinkle in the trench, like a star in a dark sky. Cursing, I hunched over and began to half-run, half-crawl toward the trench, like a fiddler crab seeking the shelter of mud. 

The rifle-fire was coming so thick now that I had to halt behind a boulder several yards from my trench. "Lexington!" I shouted. "Cover your water bottle! It's reflecting the sun – the Mippites are shooting at it!" 

Lexington stared at me, his eyes blinking. He had evidently just woken from deep sleep, because he made no move toward the water bottle. 

"Curse you, Lexington—!" Abruptly, I stopped speaking. Shifting slightly behind the boulder, I had seen what was missing from my sight before: Lexington's back. The cloth on it was singed black. 

There was no sign of a wound, but Lexington still was not moving, though ordinarily he was quick to obey orders. I had been in enough battles to know what this must mean: the shell that had amputated Fulton's hand had also touched Lexington's spine as he crouched in the shallow trench. He was paralyzed. 

I looked over at the stretcher-bearers. They were in consultation with Healer Mahone, who had made his way up to the edge of the summit. He was shaking his head, pointing at the knoll, from which machine-rifle fire continued to chatter. Even my battle-hardened soldiers were being held back by the rifle-fire, unable to reach Fulton, Lexington, or any of the other shell-wounded men there. 

I raised my body slightly, risking a bullet in the head, and at that moment saw something which made me forget Fulton, Lexington, and every other man on the field. 

Fire. 

The latest shell to explode had not merely singed the grass – it had set it afire. This was hardly out of the ordinary; we'd fought shell-fires in previous battles. But on a day like this, so hot and so dry, with no water on hand with which to douse the fire . . . 

I felt a hand grip my shoulder; turning my head, I saw that Fairview had made his way out from the safety of the General's rock to inspect the mounting danger. "Drive it toward your trench," he said succinctly. "The wind is from the south, and your breastwork is high enough that the fire will die in the trench. I'll have Arundel create a diversion." 

The next few minutes were worse than being on a raft when the nor'west blow hits the Bay. I remember a confusion of shouts and movement. One moment, I was ordering my men out of the trench, the next moment I was faced by Doyle, his arms filled with the frightened, struggling spaniel; Doyle had chosen this moment to come to me with some complaint or another about something he was being forced to leave behind in the trench. I remember shrieking at him that I'd shoot him and any other soldier who failed to fight the fire. 

My other soldiers, who looked uneasy at the idea of abandoning the relative safety of the trench, obeyed with sluggish movements. Several of them tried to argue with me. I had to point my rifle at them to force them to follow my orders. 

Nearby, the half-dead remnants of Tice's battalion charged the sharpshooters, drawing off their rifle-fire. The battle surged onto the summit, with the pleasant result that the Mippite gunners lifted their shelling of us, evidently afraid of hitting their own soldiers. The machine-rifle fire continued sporadically; many more of Tice's men fell, and the soldiers in the main trench were forced to join the fight in order to reinforce the line. I saw Fairview leading them, drawn away, yet again, from the General's rock. 

Finally, by whacking the fire at its edges with our uniform jackets and with the blankets that some of the brave stretcher-bearers brought us, we managed to drive the fire back to the right flank's trench. I took a quick look around at my men; they looked anxious and sullen. No doubt they were thinking of the dead men they had left behind in the trenches. Well, fire was the new-fashioned way of sending the dead into afterdeath, and at least the air would be clear of the growing smell of rotting corpses. I was just letting out my breath with relief at our victory over the fire when I saw a flicker of light in the trench, at the point where the fire was about to touch. The light was a reflection on a water bottle. 

It was at that point, with horror, that I realized what Doyle and my other men had been trying to tell me. 

"How could I have forgotten?" I raged many minutes later. "How could I have forgotten that the wounded still lay in my trench?" 

I had to shout to be heard. Amidst the renewed screams of the shells – for Fairview's attack had been beaten back by the Mippite sharpshooters – came the far more horrible screams from the wounded men who had not escaped the fire. 

Thanks to the quickness of my men, only a few of the wounded had been immolated. Upon seeing from the look on my face that I now understood the situation, my men hadn't bothered to waste time asking whether my orders were countermanded; they had simply run to the fire-touched trench and had begun dragging out every wounded man they could reach. A few of the wounded, watching the fire approach, had managed to crawl out on their own. Only four of the wounded had been so far away from the rest of the soldiers that the fire had engulfed them. One was Fulton, who had died without ever waking from the shock of his shell wound. Two other wounded men were lightly burned, as were the soldiers who had rescued them; they were all being cared for now in an impromptu dressing station that had been set up next to the right flank's trench. In the past minute, we had already lost one doctor's assistant and two stretcher-bearers to shrapnel, but the sharpshooters and machine-riflemen, in their first mercy of the day, were directing their shooting away from the dressing station. 

Healer Mahone was busy, not examining his patient, but shouting at two stretcher-bearers, who stood obstinately motionless, refusing to lift the patient onto their stretcher. Leaving Fairview behind the General's rock – he was nursing a sprained ankle he had gained by tripping over a rock during the latest attack – I reached Healer Mahone and his stretcher-bearers. 

Healer Mahone turned to me, full of fury. "These _natives_ ," he said, pointing at the dark-skinned stretcher-bearers, "refuse to do their duty and take this man down to the field hospital." 

I looked down at what remained of Lexington. He had been given morphine, and so his screams had subsided, but he was still whimpering. His face had been spared; the rest of him was little more than flesh flayed by fire. It was hard to believe that he was still alive. 

The doctor's assistants were working feverishly to cover Lexington's fire-scarred skin with bandages. It was like trying to put clothes on a raw oyster. I looked over at the head stretcher-bearer, who was standing nearby. 

He shrugged, saying to me with perfect grammar, "He will not survive the trip down the hill, nor the trip to the field hospital. And if he does, what then? The field hospital cannot care for such injuries. He will have to travel miles by wagon, and then miles by train, and if he should survive all that pain, what life awaits him? His skin is gone. His arms and legs do not obey his commands. . . . Sir, in my land, when such things happen to my own people, we care tenderly for the family member who is afflicted, for as long as he wishes to remain alive. Will this man's family do so?" 

He left his words hanging as a genuine question. I looked down at Lexington – orphan Lexington, whose only friends were here, on this summit. None of us who survived would be able to accompany him on that long trip. He would undergo the pain of the journey by himself, and if he survived the trip to Yclau, he would be left alone, to spend the rest of his days in a foreign hospital. 

Perplexed, I looked over at the General's rock. Seeing my wordless plea for help, Fairview limped his way over, ignoring the bullets that blew past his face. 

As he crouched down beside me, I apprised him of the situation in a low voice. Beside us, Lexington was beginning to plead for water, but we had used the last of it on the other wounded men. Nearby, Doyle watched, biting his lip and wiping away tears. The white spaniel shivered at his feet. 

Fairview asked only one question: "Can he understand me?" 

I looked over at Healer Mahone. The doctor shrugged his hands. "He is surprisingly alert – the pain is so sharp that it is cutting through the morphine. I would say, Yes, he will understand you." 

Fairview nodded. "Give us space, then, if you please." 

All of us withdrew. There was a momentary lull in the shelling and gunfire; I caught a word or two of the conversation that followed between Fairview and Lexington. "Don't have no girl," gasped Lexington at one point, clearly fighting back screams. And then, later: "Thank you, sir." 

Fairview nodded. Reaching down to his belt, he pulled out his own water bottle. Cradling Lexington's head in his arm, he raised it high enough to allow Lexington to swallow the water. Healer Mahone, grumbling something about possible abdominal wounds, tried to step forward, but I held him back. I could guess what would come next. 

Lexington gave a great sigh and closed his eyes. Fairview waited a moment to be sure they would stay closed. Then he laid Lexington carefully down and placed his hand gently over Lexington's eyes. With his free hand, he drew his bayonet blade. 

The stretcher-bearers turned their gazes away. 

It was not until Fairview and I had reached the General's rock again – dodging bullets all the way – that Fairview spoke. "It wasn't your fault, Rook," he said. "I was the commanding officer on this hill; it was my responsibility to give the order that your trench be cleared of the wounded." 

"Fairview—" Further words stuck in my throat as I watched Fairview crouch down on the grass to clean the blood off his bayonet. Finally I said, "Lexington wasn't your responsibility. I should have been the one who did what you did." 

Standing and sheathing his bayonet in its scabbard, Fairview looked over his shoulder at where the stretcher-bearers were carefully lifting one of the other wounded men onto a stretcher. Lexington lay where they had left him, as still as the other corpses in the trench, blood still oozing out from the wound in his heart. "I hope that the Fates will forgive me," said Fairview softly. "I've heard that they dislike it when men usurp their role." 

"Sweet blood, man, don't talk that way. It's not your fault—" 

And then I stopped. I stopped, not because of the look Fairview was giving me, but because I was remembering, as he remembered, all the times he and I had said with bitterness: "An officer is responsible for the actions of his men." 

Fairview scratched at where a stray bullet had sent a line of blood across his shoulder, ripping his shirt as it went. "Do you recall how often I talked about how we might have the good luck to be promoted in the field?" 

I made no reply. Fairview's gaze went beyond me: to the men who had died, the men who were dying, and the men who were waiting for their own turn to come. He said quietly, "I'm beginning to understand why the General always had worry wrinkles on his forehead." 

Then he said nothing more, for the shells were beginning to fall fast and thick, and so we both had our duties.


	10. The Bullets Was Like Rain

> _Diary entry by Private Jones of the Fifth Light Infantry:_
> 
> "ordered to move again as fast as possible in single rank and a large interval between each man and for the first time we thought we were in for a rough time of it, and we was. 
> 
> "we ascended Spy Hill, and it was a most difficult job to climb, it being so steep, and also allowing the wounded to be carried down. General Pentheusson I passed going up, he was being carried down on a stretcher, and those who could speak of the wounded was saying its worse than a Slaughter House up there, that did not improve our feelings, but of course we had to go. 
> 
> "I saw several Colonials loaded with water, lose their footing and fell to the bottom, when near the top we were greeted by a shower of bullets and a lot of our men fell at once. 
> 
> "it was a tremendous fire meet us here, and dead and wounded and dying was awful and the groaning was sickening, I was lying on the ground firing with the remainder on the extreme left of the firing line, and Sergt Smitt was talking and telling me where to fire, he was hit through the nose, he was my right hand man, and directly after this a young fellow was shot on my left. 
> 
> "soon after this I was ordered to go to the Main Trench with a message, as it was not safe to lift your head up off the ground I did not like the job, but I had to do it and there was little time for thinking, so I said a prayer to myself and off I went, and the bullets was like rain round me."

  
o—o—o

I reached the main trench. The crossfire had died down somewhat, so Fairview had emerged from the safety of the General's rock in order to inspect the installation of sandbags at the breastwork of the left flank's trench. There were only enough sandbags to cover three yards of the trench. 

"Are more supplies coming?" were Fairview's first words to me. 

I shook my head as I wearily flopped my belly onto the ground of the shallow trench. "Reinforcements are within sight, though." 

Fairview sighed. "I wonder whether they'll help or hurt." 

I knew what he meant. The more men who were crammed onto the hillside, the easier it would be for the Mippite sharpshooters to pick them off. There was no room for any more men in the trenches, which remained crammed with the dead and the dying; the stretcher-bearers still hardly dared venture onto the summit, so intense was the crossfire. 

What we needed most wasn't more men. 

"Guns?" said Fairview, not very hopefully. 

"When I left, the General was debating with Spearman as to whether the big guns could even be brought up such a steep path." 

"They're both still alive, then?" Fairview reached for his spy-glass and checked, for the dozenth time, to be sure that the Mippites on the ledge hadn't moved forward again. "Is the General returning to the summit?" 

"He wanted to." 

Fairview looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. His beard was matted with sweat and dirt, and his cheek was caked with blood – whether his or someone else's, I wasn't sure. Yet he managed, with that elegant arch of the brow, to remain Fairview, Fair of View. 

"I convinced him that he could do more good by remaining at the foot of the hill and directing supplies our way." 

Fairview was silent a moment before replying, "Sending him up here would be a death sentence, with that wound of his." 

"It would," I agreed. I didn't voice the thought on both our minds, that death was likely to come to all of us anyway. But if we had to die, let us at least do so under the command of a man of Fairview's caliber, rather than from throwing our lives away under General Pentheusson. 

"Did he protest?" Fairview asked, glancing over at the men in Tice's battalion. They all looked weary unto death. Major Arundel had been shot dead around the time I left the summit to check whether any of our pleas for water were reaching the engineers at the western foot of the hill. From what I could see, all of the remaining officers in the mounted infantry had been killed while I was gone. 

"No. I suspect he was relieved. . . . I don't think he's a coward," I added softly as Fairview arched his eyebrow again. "Just sickened by the conflict." 

Fairview gave a short laugh. "And he thinks the rest of us are enjoying this?" He waved toward the remainder of the field, littered with fragments of bodies. "Well, it's for the best, I suppose. How many hours left?" 

I checked my pocket-watch, a gift from Fairview on my previous birthday; it had somehow survived the conflict so far. "It's just past one; we've six hours to go. Do you think we'll make it till nightfall?" 

"We must." Fairview turned his attention back to the ledge. "If we had better shelter— Hey!" 

At the sound of his sharp alert, I rose onto my knees. Nearby, a cluster of Tice's soldiers – dazed, leaderless, no doubt half mad from the incessant shelling – had raised their hands and were starting downhill, toward the ledge. One of the men was waving a white handkerchief. There was a stirring below; then the Mippites began to emerge from the rocks, rifles in hand. 

"Stop!" ordered Fairview to Tice's men, all fury and fire as he stood up. Then he turned to the approaching Mippites and shouted, "You may go to afterdeath! I command on this hill and allow no surrender – go on with your firing!" 

They took him at his word; without stepping back an inch, they raised their rifles and began to shoot. All of us nearby retreated from the left flank's trench; the rifle-fire from the Mippites – barely twelve yards away now – was too intense to endure. 

I fell back to my own men, who were watching the scene with concern. From the right flank's trench, I could see Fairview in the shelter of the General's rock, roundly scolding the score of men who had tried to surrender. They all looked ashamed of themselves. 

I caught sight of movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to look toward the crest above the western slope. The movement came from a major, staring amazed at the carnage, while his men cringed or fell dead from the continued crossfire. The Fifth Light Infantry – I recognized their insignia. 

I managed to catch the major's eye and wave him in the direction of Fairview. He nodded and trotted forward. There was a hurried discussion between the two officers; then the major shouted orders to his men. A moment later, the soldiers from the left-flank trench who had tried to surrender gave a great roar and charged forward, led by Fairview, still limping. The Fifth followed behind them. Within minutes, the Mippites had fallen back to within five yards of their ledge, successfully dislodged from the ground they had tried to gain. 

I quickly ascertained that all was well with my men while Fairview sent the Fifth over to support the nearly nonexistent Eighth in the left flank. Then I crawled over to where Fairview crouched in the main trench, a triumphant smile on his face. "Not enjoying this?" I said lightly. 

He gave a slight laugh as he took the water bottle I handed him. A cloud had brought a momentary mist down upon us, but the hill was still as hot as a cooking pan. "It's the first victory we've had all day. It's worth enjoying." 

_Because we'll have no other._ Those were his unspoken words. We both sobered. Even with the reinforcements, it seemed unlikely that we would gain any ground. Yet the one order that the Commander-in-Chief had sent to Fairview had been clear. Fairview's stance on such matters had just been made equally clear. 

"Dick," Fairview said hesitantly. 

"Yes, Alec?" I looked at him with curiosity; we rarely addressed each other by our given names. 

"Can you keep a secret?" 

I looked around. The men jammed up on either side of Fairview and me seemed little more than dead. Fairview's messenger-lad and soldier-servant were talking to each other, and my own men were back in the right flank's trench, hidden in the momentary mist. Nobody appeared to be listening to Fairview and me. "I suppose so. Why? Do you have a secret love-mate?" 

He gave a breathless laugh. "I guess you could say that. I haven't been sure— Well, I lacked the courage, I suppose—" 

It was at this moment that Doyle plopped down beside us. Of course. 

"Me and the fellows," he said in an accusing voice, "me and the fellows want to talk to you about _this_." 

"Yes?" I said as patiently as I could, while Fairview buried his face in his hands. 

Doyle held up a ration biscuit and shook it in my face. "It ain't natural, and it ain't just, to make working soldiers eat stuff like this. The sailormen in our navy, they get much better rations. Oysters and the like. While us, we do digging that's near to break your back—" 

"Doyle," I said through gritted teeth, "will – you – go – _away_!" 

There was a pause, punctuated only by the soft whistle of wind as it sent the cloud further down onto us, softening our surroundings, blurring the rocks. Then Doyle said in a hurt voice, "I knowed you ain't wanting me." 

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Doyle—" 

"None of the masters ever do. They hire me and they fire me . . . none of them ever like having me 'bout. I was thinking it'd be different, after you and the other master here picked me out special for this job. But it's just the same as it's always been. I know when I ain't wanted." He gave Fairview and me an injured look. He did not, however, go away. 

"Doyle." I passed my hand over my face. "There is a time and a place—" 

"Wait." Fairview, who had been listening to our conversation with a contemplative expression, grabbed my arm. "Listen." 

I listened. I heard what I'd heard a minute before: nothing. No shells, no machine rifles, no gunfire of any sort. Only the soft sound of shuffling. 

_"Fix bayonets!"_ At once, Fairview was on his feet shouting; this was no time for sending quiet messages. "Fix bayonets, 1st Ninth! They're about to—" 

The Mippites attacked.


	11. You Must Hold On

> _Flag dispatch to the commanding officer of the Allied forces at Spy Hill at 10:30 AM, from the Commander-in-Chief:_
> 
> "I am sending two battalions, and the Fifth Light Infantry are on their way up. You must hold on to the last. No surrender."

  
o—o—o

I would like to tell you what a trench attack is like. I would also like to tell you what it's like to be hit by a bullet. In both cases, though, the act is too swift, the pain too intense – the mind reels, the memory forgets. 

An officer has to make reports, though, so I will piece together, as best I can, the events that followed. 

Thanks to the mist, the near surrender, and Doyle's endless chatter, the Mippite soldiers were able to creep within ten yards of us. The moment they attacked, the left and right flanks began to shoot our attackers . . . but not for long. The Mippites were too close. Far too soon, the Mippites reached the main trench: Fairview and his men. 

Fairview's men were caught off-guard, still fumbling to attach their bayonets to their rifles. Some of the men discharged their rifles at point-blank range; Mippites fell. But many of the Mippites who reached Fairview's men yanked the rifles out of our soldiers' grips and used those same rifles to shoot, stab, or simply break our soldiers' heads. 

I caught no more than a glimpse of this. My place was with my men, who, if they were going to be of any help, needed orders. I was halfway back to the right flank's trench when I heard Doyle shout. 

I turned, not because of Doyle, but because I knew he was standing next to Fairview. It was Doyle, though, who was in trouble; a Mippite had just succeeded in wrenching away Doyle's rifle. 

Fairview, having called out initial orders and fixed his bayonet to his rifle, had taken several limping steps away. He was retreating to the General's rock in order to direct the fighting. That was the proper thing to do. 

Now he turned around, ran back to the main trench, and stabbed Doyle's attacker in the thigh. 

I've wondered since then if he would have done this if Doyle hadn't given his "pity poor me" speech beforehand. I doubt it. Fairview knew as well as I did that a general who deliberately stays to grapple with the enemy in a trench skirmish is no general at all. A general has to be somewhat distant from the events, so that he can properly direct them. The fact that Fairview was on this hill at all was a disadvantage; for him to come to the aid of one of his soldiers was as foolish . . . 

Well, as foolish as stepping out from the shelter of a rock to give a cigarette to a dying soldier. Perhaps Fairview had more in common with General Pentheusson than we had realized. 

What happened next was a blur. I saw the Mippite attacker fall, clutching at his thigh. He was still alive. I'm not sure whether Fairview would have killed him or simply restored Doyle's rifle to him. 

But another man had no doubt as to Fairview's intentions. I reached the scene just as the Mippite field-cornet did. He took no notice of me; he simply raised his rifle and brought it down with a loud crack on Fairview's head. 

Fairview fell, like a lamphouse that has been plowed into the water by a giant steamer. The field-cornet, whose rifle was now broken, grabbed Fairview's rifle. Fairview's fixed bayonet glittered in the soft sunlight that had broken through the mist. The deadly blade was poised over Fairview's body. 

I stepped in front of the bayonet and waited, motionless. Have I mentioned that I'd carelessly left my rifle in my own trench? 

I don't know whether I would have acted as I did, if it hadn't been for Doyle's bloody guidebook. Common sense would have told me that, after a blow like that, Fairview was probably dead, and my men needed me alive. Sacrificing my life for Fairview's corpse would be of no use. 

But the illogical part of my mind – the part that was still remembering that frieze and the cycle back that had accompanied it – said, "I rescued Fairview once before. I can do it again." 

"Colonel!" It was Doyle. He had reached down and scooped up his rifle, which was fallen from the hand of the wounded Mippite. He laughed as he tossed it toward me. He was still laughing when the field-cornet shot him. 

That shot was the field-cornet's mistake. So was coming to the wounded Mippite's aid. The officer had made the same error Fairview had, of focussing his attention on one soldier, rather than on the battle as a whole. All around us, having failed to receive the orders they needed, the Mippites were falling back. 

The field-cornet took a swift look at me. He was armed; I was armed. This was no time for a duel. With ill-concealed irony, I tipped my helmet at him; after all, he had risked his own life for the sake of the wounded soldier lying at my feet. 

He gave a half-smile, pulled the wounded soldier to his feet, and as the cloud that had misted us rose higher, he helped the wounded soldier stagger back to the Mippites' territory. 

I let them go; I was too busy staring at Fairview and Doyle, lying motionless next to each other. Blood covered them both. The white spaniel licked at Doyle's face, vainly trying to bring him back to life. Fairview's eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. His beard was dirty, his shirt torn, his face cloud-dappled under the midday sun. 

I was granted time enough to kneel down and close Fairview's eyes. Then I was too busy to do anything except issue orders, because the Mippites' big guns were beginning to boom again, and the General's rock belonged to me.


	12. I Shall Barely Hold Out

> _Written dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 2:30 PM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "Some of the Fifth Light Infantry here now, and I hear the Third coming up, but force really inadequate. What reinforcements can you send to hold the hill tonight? We are badly in need of water. There are many killed and wounded. 
> 
> "Richard Rook. 
> 
> "P.S. If you wish to make a certainty of hill for night, you must send more Infantry and attack enemy's guns."  
>    
> 
> _Written dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 6:30 PM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "The troops which marched up here last night are quite done up. They have had no water, and ammunition is running short. The enemy are now firing heavily on both flanks (rifle, shell, and machine-rifle), while a heavy rifle fire is being kept up on the front. If my casualties go on at the present rate, I shall barely hold out the night. 
> 
> "A large number of stretcher-bearers should be sent up, and also all the water possible. 
> 
> "The situation is critical." 
> 
> "Rook."  
>    
> 
> _Written dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 10 PM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill (having received no reply to the previous dispatches):_
> 
> "Regret to report that I have been obliged to abandon Spy Hill, as the position became untenable. I have withdrawn the troops in regular order, and will come to report as soon as possible. 
> 
> "Richard Rook."  
>    
> 
> _From the Commander-in-Chief to the High Masters' Commission on the War in the Magisterial Republic of Mip:_
> 
> "We had awful luck on that day; I had got two big guns and a mountain battery halfway up Spy Hill, when the troops came down. If we had had the luck, out of all the colonels up there, to have found a really good fighting man, we should have been in Fort Frederick in two days."

  
o—o—o

"How many are left?" 

We stood in the churned-up mud near Spy Hill, the General and I, watching the long train of weary, stumbling Landsteader soldiers retreating west along the dusty turnpike. I had to hold onto the rocky boulder next to me to keep from swaying. It was my fourth day without sleep; I had been awake all night, after admitting defeat in the Battle of Spy Hill. 

We were hearing rumors that the Mippite soldiers had retreated overnight as well . . . but had returned the next morning to find Spy Hill unoccupied. Now it was theirs. 

I shook my head in response to the General's question. "We've had no time to call the roll, sir, but I'm estimating that our casualties are over a thousand. About one-third of the men in my own battalion fell." I lowered my gaze from Spy Hill, pockmarked from the pom-pom fire, seeing in my mind's eye the last image I had witnessed when I left the mountain: Fairview, still motionless in his ninth hour of death. 

"Yes," said the General in a faint voice. "Yes, I thought so." 

We were both silent, listening to the sobs and moans of the soldiers who were retreating. A couple of unwounded soldiers passed us, carrying wounded men who were too weak to walk. There weren't many wounded men amongst us; we'd had no time to gather most of our wounded before we fled from the hill. 

I had half expected, upon reaching the General, that I would be arrested at once. After all, I had disobeyed the order given to us by the Commander-in-Chief. _No surrender._

"I have done all I can, and I am not going back," I had told the General defiantly. "Better six good battalions safely down the hill than a bloody mop-up in the morning." 

The General, though, had simply shaken his head. "Preparations for the second day's defense should have been organized during the day, and have been commenced at nightfall," he had said carefully. "As this was not done, I think you exercised a wise discretion." 

It was a small consolation, to know that I would not face a court-martial. But I knew that, in the years to come, my decision would be criticized by many men who had not been at Spy Hill— 

Oh, why do I bother to say this? You know the rest. You know that I am now known as the man who surrendered Spy Hill – the officer who admitted defeat when the Landsteaders were on the point of victory. My name will remain infamous for as long as the cycle of rebirth continues. 

But this tale is not really about what happened at Spy Hill. It is about what happened afterwards, in the moments that have never been written about.


	13. They Came Down Soldiers

> _Comment by General Pentheusson to the High Masters' Commission on the War in the Magisterial Republic of Mip, speaking of the troops at Spy Hill:_
> 
> "I did not consider that my men were soldiers until they came down from Spy Hill. They went up recruits, I think, and they came down soldiers."

  
o—o—o

As I stood there with the General, I heard a cry – a shout of warning. Acting from instinct, I leapt onto the boulder, pulling out Fairview's spy-glass and training it in the direction of the sound. I stiffened. Then I looked down at the General and said softly, "White flag, sir." 

"Greene," the General said quickly to his soldier-servant. "Send word to the picket to hold fire. A truce party is arriving." 

"More than a truce party, sir." I had the spy-glass fixed upon what was approaching us from Big Pool Road. Stretchers, wagons, men stumbling hard. . . . I heard the General climb awkwardly up the rock – his shoulder was still swathed in bandages – and so I turned to hand him the spy-glass silently. He took a look, then said to me, "Send word." He handed me back the spy-glass and climbed carefully off the rock. 

"Yes, sir." I hopped down, found a passing soldier, and sent him to the field hospital, where the hardest wounded were still being tended. 

The General and I stayed where we were, at the crossroads between Big Pool Road and the Magisterial Turnpike. Eventually, through the narrow gap in the trees, the Mippite delegation reached us. 

They were led by a middle-aged man who had lost his hat in the conflict; he looked as dusty and fatigued as we did. He took us in at a glance, but if he recognized me, he had good enough breeding to pretend he didn't. Instead, he and the soldier bearing the truce flag stopped immediately in front of the General. 

"General Pentheusson?" said the middle-aged man in our tongue. "General Starke's compliments, sir. He is returning your wounded to you." 

"Lord Aldred," the General said slowly, and I started in my place. So I had spared the life of General Starke's younger brother. Well, Fairview would have died in any case. By this point, I had no taste for revenge. 

"General Pentheusson." Field-Cornet Lord Aldred Starke met the General's gaze without wavering, not bothering to deny his part in the slaughter we had undergone. I wondered whether General Starke had snickered at the idea of sending us the very officer who had brought about so many of our deaths. 

General Pentheusson managed to pull himself together. "Thank you, field-cornet. I have arranged to have your own wounded returned to your General. . . . Ah, here they are." 

Field-Cornet Starke raised his eyebrows as the four stretchers came forward, but he said nothing. He must have already realized how disproportionate the casualties had been between the two sides in this battle. "Thank you, General Pentheusson. General Starke is returning three hundred of your soldiers. He has also asked me to let you know that he will allow you to retrieve your dead tomorrow from Spy Hill, under flag of truce." 

"Please offer my thanks to your brother." If nothing else, the General could match Field-Cornet Starke in well-bred speech. "Will you stay and take refreshment with me?" 

We had precious little stores remaining, but there was no point in emphasizing that fact to the Mippites. Field-Cornet Starke shook his head, though. "Thank you, General, but my orderly, young Demas, was wounded in the fighting. I want to return to see that he is well cared for." 

"Of course," said the General, managing to hide his relief. "Colonel Rook, if you could find an appropriate escort for the field-cornet . . ." 

It took many minutes for me to locate a Landsteader soldier who was unlikely to bayonet the enemy officer. By the time I returned, the first wagons bearing our wounded had arrived, tended by nurses of the Red Circle. We have such nurses among our own soldiers in the force attacking eastern Mip; they appear everywhere in wartime, tending the wounded on both sides of any conflict. 

The Red Circle is actually a spiral; having sent the Mippite officer on his way, I stared at a wagon painting of one such spiral of rebirth until my eyes hurt. Then I asked the General, "May I volunteer to lead the party to retrieve our dead from the hill, sir?" 

The General shook his head; his eye was on a young man on a stretcher, crying piteously for his mother. The young man's face was half blown off. "We have no time to retrieve the dead. The Commander-in-Chief's orders are for us to retreat back over the Potomac at once. He still hopes we can find a way to relieve the forces trapped at Fort Frederick." 

"But sir, our dead—!" I cut myself off, biting my lip. What did it matter? Fairview was dead as ashes, regardless as to whether I retrieved his body and buried it. He was reborn into a baby somewhere in the world, undoubtedly far beyond my reach. I should let go. 

I could not let go. 

I looked over at the General. He was staring at one of the returned soldiers, who had been bayoneted in the gut and looked as though he would not live out the night. The General said, "I've resigned." 

"Sir?" As I spoke, I stared, stupid with sleeplessness. 

The General turned his attention toward me; his face was grey with weariness. "I've resigned my commission. The Commander-in-Chief has accepted my resignation. He agrees that I can do better work for the Dozen Landsteads in the diplomatic office." 

I did not know what to say. I wanted to tell the General, "You're a fine officer" . . . but that would be a lie, and he would know it. 

As I struggled for speech, he smiled – a half-smile, implicitly acknowledging my dilemma. "You're to take my place." 

"Sir?" Truly, I must be asleep. 

"I did not fail to hear you the day before last, General Rook; I simply failed to heed your words of wisdom. These men" – he gestured toward a group of cripples who were hobbling past us – "have paid the price for my folly. They'll be in good hands with you, I know." 

I was silent. Two days before, this would have been glorious news – news that would have made both me and Fairview shout with joy. 

But since then, I had witnessed Fairview shot dead after his own promotion, and I had learned what it meant to be the man who stands in the shelter of the General's rock. It was a privilege I feared I could no longer bear. Not without Fairview there to help me accept the burden. 

Doyle's white spaniel, which had been pawing away at a bush next to the boulder, came out and quietly sat at my feet. She had followed us down during the retreat, clearly puzzled by her inability to wake Doyle. Now she watched, her head turning back and forth, as the first of the Mippites' ambulance wagons reached the crossroads at Ammippian Springs. Nearby, a handful of medical men were moving forward. We had lost many of the Yclau doctors and assistants at Spy Hill, and the colonial stretcher-bearers had sneaked off somewhere during the morning to lick their wounds, but the Commander-in-Chief had returned the Yclau ambulance corps, and those men were now kept busy transferring the wounded from the Mippites' ambulances to ours. 

It took me some time to realize that the men accompanying the Mippite ambulances were all dark-skinned. 

I had only a moment to understand the implications of this – the colonial stretcher-bearers had gone _back_ to the bloody battlefield to retrieve our wounded – and then I stopped one of the wagons by raising my hand. I had recognized the man lying in it. 

Biddle was wrapped in bandages covering half his face; I would not have recognized him, except that he still wore his engraved wedding watch in his pocket. As I spoke to him, he stirred. 

"Sir?" he said in a breathless manner, almost too low-voiced to be heard. "Oh, sir, General Rook – no one will tell me. Did we win the battle, sir? Did we win?" 

I could feel the eye of the stretcher-bearer upon me. As it happened, it was the head stretcher-bearer. I gestured toward Biddle and raised my eyebrows. 

The head stretcher-bearer shook his head and drew a circle on his forehead with his thumb. Biddle was entering into death, then. No wonder no one had been willing to tell Biddle the truth. I leaned over and said, in the most cheerful voice I could force, "Not to worry, Biddle. All is well. Your sacrifice, and that of your comrades, was not in vain." 

Biddle gasped with relief. "Thank you, sir," he murmured. "Thank you. My woman will be proud to hear that. When I write her the news—" 

"I'll write her myself," I promised. "You get some rest now." I stepped back; the head stretcher-bearer's concentration transferred back to his charge. As I watched Biddle placed in the wagon reserved for the dead, it occurred to me that I had never asked the head stretcher-bearer his name. 

I turned away, shaken by my encounter with Biddle. So many of the men I had known were gone. Canton, killed in the first minute of the battle, whose last long conversation with me had been in receipt of my reprimand. Tice, whom I had misjudged so badly. Fulton and Lexington, both immolated by my fault. Doyle – poor, silly Doyle, who had never found the kind master he wanted. Davey, who had tried vainly all afternoon and evening to revive Fairview, and who had been shot in the head during the last hour of conflict, shortly before I gave the order for retreat. 

Fairview himself, abandoned on the hill. 

Fairview, who would never have abandoned the hill. 

It was at that moment, I think, that I realized why the Fates had stolen Fairview from me. It was because always, equal friends though we were, I had taken my cue from Fairview. He had led in battle; I had followed, standing by his shoulder, but never taking a step where he had not taken a step. 

Even if we had succeeded in installing guns at the top of Spy Hill overnight – an unlikely prospect, I thought – and even if we had entrenched ourselves better up there, it was still a hill that we could not have held, except at the cost of most of our remaining men. I had realized that, looking down at Biddle, and so what I had said to him was the exact truth. His sacrifice was not in vain. His upcoming death, and the death of many others, had woken me to the fact that our war with Mip was a terrible, bloody conflict that was much better resolved through the patient efforts of Pentheusson and other diplomats than through arms on the field. 

Knowing that, I was more determined than ever to be a General. 

It's odd: the same circumstances, which turn some men into pacifists and diplomats, turn other men into better soldiers. Before, war had been a game for me; now, having been on Spy Hill, I knew that every order I gave would determine whether my men suffered without need. So I was determined to give good orders. I was determined to provide them with wise leadership they might not receive elsewhere. 

None of this would have happened if Fairview had not fallen in battle. He was a different man than I; he would have held out to the exceedingly bitter end at Spy Hill. His departure, which tore at my vitals like an exploded shell, had nonetheless freed me to recognize certain facts I would not have seen if he had remained in command. 

I wondered whether he had been granted knowledge of my transformation, in the new life which he must now be living as a baby in someone's cradle. 

I shook my head and strode forward. There were hundreds of men passing through these crossroads, and nearly all of them required comfort. I did my best, during the next hour, to supply that. As the line of ambulance wagons slowly moved its way up Big Pool Road, I met each ambulance and exchanged a few words with the wounded, thanking them for their contributions to the fight. To the wounded men who were well enough to walk – and would therefore likely continue their work as soldiers – I acknowledged the gravity of what had occurred, then did my best to provide a cheerful assessment of what lay ahead. Faces brightened, spines straightened, men who had hovered at the gates of afterdeath seemed to find new reason to remain on this side of the gates. 

I found myself wondering why it had taken me half a lifetime to learn what it meant to be an officer. 

My messenger-lad, newly risen from his sickbed, arrived and handed me a dispatch. It was from the Commander-in-Chief, confirming my appointment as the new Major-General in charge of General Pentheusson's brigade. As an afterthought, the Commander-in-Chief added that he had heard various reports that Colonel Fairview had performed well in battle, and therefore he too was to be rewarded with a brigade, though for now he would remain a Major-General in my brigade . . . 

I folded the note and slipped it into my pocket. Army communications, it seemed, were no better now than they had been in the battle. Still, Fairview's grandmother would be pleased by the posthumous honor her grandson had received; that was something. I turned my attention to the white spaniel, who was yipping excitedly in her usual fashion. What the bloody blades was I to do with the beast? Well, I supposed the brigade might make a pet out of her, given that she had proved herself in battle. I turned to look at what she was yipping at— 

—and then I was running, stumbling, calling, as though my life's thread had just been snapped, and I had only seconds left in which to speak. 

Doyle was holding him. His own right arm was in a bloody sling, but his left arm was firmly around the waist of Fairview. I could see no blood on Fairview, only a bandage around his head. His eyes looked dazed. 

"Oh, there you are." Doyle's eyes brightened as I skidded to a halt beside them. "Thought you'd be along, soon enough. That the General over there? Hoped he'd survived. Most of the rest are gone, I figure. Thought I was a goner too, when that rifle shattered my funny bone. I fell down in the trench, and that weren't a safe place to be, I'll tell you, but there weren't no safe place on that hill, certain. So I figured I'd just stay still and hope for the best. Fairview were 'side me, and I could hear him breathing – a day and a night I'm hearing him, and we was both struggling to stay away from afterdeath, I guess. Then the guns got all silent, and I'm thinking it's time we was moving on, 'fore the locals come and knife us. But the master here, he didn't seem much taken to moving, so I had to wake him up, ungentle-like." 

Only death, it seemed, was likely to still Doyle's tongue. Fairview had seen me now and recognized me; he gave me a lopsided smile as Doyle rattled on about the various methods he'd tried to poke and kick Fairview into awareness. 

"What worked?" I asked, addressing Fairview. 

"You did," Doyle replied cheerfully. "I told him you'd keelhaul him if he didn't return to duty." 

I ignored Doyle. Fairview blinked rapidly, as a man does when emerging into daylight from darkness. Then he said softly, "They wanted me to go." 

"Who did?" I asked. Behind us, the stumbling train of three hundred wounded men was nearing its tail end. 

"I don't know. The Fates? Someone. They wanted me to go on. To be born. Again. And I said no, not until I saw you. I knew you must be there. I'd seen the Mippite begin to stab you." 

I felt a chill all down my back. One hears stories about such things – of men who enter so far into afterdeath that they can remember afterwards what it is like. But that tale is rare; men who are so far gone don't often return. 

Even Doyle was silent now, though he kept Fairview firmly in his grip. Fairview said, still hesitant, "I wouldn't go on. I didn't want a new life; I wanted my old one. They kept urging me. I got angry at them. I called for you. And then I heard Doyle speaking. He said you wanted me. So I came back." 

He spoke simply, as though nothing were more natural than for him to defy the laws of death for my sake. For a moment I was still. 

Then I took him into my arms. I told myself that I was only relieving Doyle of his burden, but somehow my lips found Fairview's lips, and I was kissing him with a lifetime's worth of accumulated passion. Sweet blood, he was kissing me back. And it was good, feeling the power of a man who was my equal in strength and rank. It was very good. 

But it would have been good in any case, because it was Fairview. 

I drew back finally, though not letting go of Fairview's waist. Instinctively, I looked around. The General – perhaps out of pure tact – had entered into conversation with his messenger-lad, setting his back to our reunion. Some of the other soldiers passing us, who knew that Fairview and I considered ourselves equals, looked shocked at seeing their frivolous slanders confirmed. 

Doyle merely grinned. "There now," he said, "I knowed that if I brung him back alive, it would be worth it. Maybe a little reward, hmm? A few sips from the officers' supply of drink?" 

"Doyle," I said, unable to help laughing, "what are we going to do with you?" 

"Drown him?" suggested Fairview, but he was laughing too. His eyes still looked dazed, as though he remained half in afterdeath, but it was clear that he could understand what I was saying and doing. 

Doyle shrugged, grinning. "Keep me close by, I figure. You're the only masters who can stand me." 

"I'll raise you in rank—" 

"If you want to be my soldier-servant—" 

Fairview and I stopped and stared at each other, while Doyle nearly rolled off the road, laughing at us. Then he stopped and pointed. "Oh my blessed, see? That's what I was telling you 'bout!" 

I stared at what he was pointing at. "The General?" 

He rolled his eyes, the way he always did when officers missed the point. "The rock he's standing right near – that's the monument I was telling you about. See here . . ." 

He hurried forward, while the spaniel tried to trip him in her eagerness to welcome him back. Fairview and I followed more slowly. I still had my arm around Fairview, but he shook himself loose as we reached the boulder I had stood upon earlier. I let him go, uncertain as to why he wished to be released. 

"Look." Doyle pointed at a sketch on the rock-face that I'd missed. "Ancient. Half worn away, but you can see it's just like the one in the guidebook." 

I stepped forward to look. There, almost entirely hidden by the bush that the spaniel had been pawing at, was the frieze of the soldier saving his love-mate's life. I leaned forward to take a closer look as Doyle chattered on. 

"Third century, my boat-master said. Right old. I heard there was another monument somewhere, over their grave." 

I felt the shock all down my spine; I straightened up abruptly. "Their grave?" 

"Well, they died, of course." Doyle was giving me another of his "you blockheaded officer" looks. "All that shilly-shallying the clean-shaved man did over whether to save his friend . . . He waited too long, and the spear killed his friend, and then the chariot-wheel went over the clean-shaved man, and he got killed too. My boat-master, he said that there are later tales about the two friends. The way folks tell it, the men kept meeting again, time after time over the centuries, and each time the clean-shaved man would be granted the chance to save the bearded man, but he'd wait too long, and they'd both be killed. The Fates kept giving the two men another chance to be together – another chance to show that they was worthy of each other's love." 

I couldn't look at Fairview; I wasn't sure what I'd see in his face. But I didn't have to look. A moment later I felt his hand warm around mine, squeezing it as tight as a clam— 

Do you remember now? Ah, I see that you do. I suspected that your memory, made faint by your healing wound, would sharpen if I recounted the events of Spy Hill. So you know what that clasping of hands meant to both of us: A reminder of life. We were both alive now, and what happened in the past – what I failed to do for you in the past – no longer mattered. We had each other now. 

I felt your hand's strength pressing against mine in a silent, sacred vow to each other that we would not allow history to repeat itself. 

"C'mon," said Doyle, nudging me in his familiar manner. "The General, he's waving at us. Guess he's impatient to go on." 

"Yes," I said, turning to match your smile with my own. "Yes, I guess we all are." 

o—o—o  
o—o—o


	14. Historical Note

This particular story in the _Turn-of-the-Century Toughs_ cycle is set in an alternative version of Washington County in western Maryland, at the close of the nineteenth century. 

Stone Quarry Ridge actually exists in Washington County, as do all the other locations mentioned in this story (although I have renamed Indian Springs as Ammippian Springs, and the Magisterial Turnpike is known in our world as the National Turnpike or National Road). Spy Hill, however, has another name in our world: Spion Kop. 

That name reverberates for many people, for Spion Kop ("Spy Hill" in Dutch) is the location of one of the deadliest attacks in military history. 

In 1899, negotiations broke down between the British and the Dutch settlers in South Africa, who were at that time called Boers. (The British claimed they wished to defend the rights of British citizens living in Boer territories; the Boers claimed the British wanted the gold being mined there.) As a result, Britain sent the might of its imperial army to subdue the Boers – an easy task, the British thought, for the Boers were mere farmers and shopkeepers, with no standing army. 

When part of the British army became trapped and besieged in the fortified town of Ladysmith, another British force was sent to the rescue. On the summer evening of January 23rd, 1900, British soldiers scaled the southern slope of Spion Kop, chased away a small number of Boers from what they thought was the northern crest of the summit, dug a series of shallow trenches, and waited for the night to end and the fog to lift. Then came the awful truth. 

"There cannot have been many battlefields where there was such an accumulation of horrors within so small a compass," commented Deneys Reitz, a young Boer soldier who fought at Spion Kop and who viewed the British dead afterwards. Against incredible odds, the Boers managed, in a single day, to wound or kill hundreds of British soldiers within a small area of ground – "an acre of massacre," as one war correspondent put it. The Boers would continue to hold out against the imperial might for many months, until finally surrendering to the British in 1902, bringing to an end the South African War, also called the Boer War or Anglo-Boer War. 

o—o—o

A few notes on my sources, and on the alterations I've made to the original tale: 

As should be clear from what I've written above, I've transplanted a South African battle to a Maryland setting (though retaining roughly the same time period). I've altered details of the battle, and of the fighting immediately before it, in order to fit the geography of and around Stone Quarry Ridge. (For example, at Spion Kop, the most deadly gunfire was endured by the right flank, rather than by the left flank.) However, the general outline of the battle remains as I've described it. 

Very little information is available on Washington County, Maryland, at the end of the nineteenth century. I've drawn most of my information from historical maps and from a visit to the area (though I've never climbed to the top of Stone Quarry Ridge). My best guess is that most of Stone Quarry Ridge was forested at the end of the nineteenth century (as it is now), but the historical maps leave this matter uncertain, so I've considered myself at liberty to imagine the hill as denuded of vegetation. 

A few homes did exist at the southern tip of the ridge. During the nineteenth century, two of the owners of these homes were named Tice and Roman. Tax records show that, in 1803, "Stone Quarry" in Washington County was owned by Richard Rook. 

Fairview is the name of the mountain to the northeast of Stone Quarry Ridge. It is also the name of a mountain near Spion Kop. In order to travel on a road that passed that mountain, on the way to relieve the besieged soldiers, the British army decided to make an attack upon Spion Kop. 

Spearman's was the name of a British encampment near Spion Kop. Most of the other Landsteader names in my story come from streets in Baltimore (i.e. "Balmer," the local pronunciation for that harbor city in Maryland). 

Because this story is historical speculative fiction rather than a history book, I've tried to capture the essential flavor of the Battle of Spion Kop, which has meant simplifying a complicated set of historical events and minimizing a lengthy cast of characters. 

All of the characters in my story are invented. Most of the incidents I mention in my story (such as the smashing of the heliograph at the very moment that the cry for help was being transmitted, the discovery of the paralyzed soldier with the reflecting water bottle, the plea by the head-wounded man to know whether the battle was won, and yes, the white spaniel) actually occurred at Spion Kop, though not always in the order or exact manner shown in my story. In cases where certain incidents are linked to historical figures, I've parcelled out those incidents in an indiscriminate fashion among my characters. Thus the Commander-in-Chief, Pentheusson, Tice, Fairview, and Rook take on the roles played by a variety of British officers. For example, my story has three colonels: one who led the charge on Spion Kop, one who held the hill during the middle of the day, and one who surrendered the hill. In historical fact, all of these actions were undertaken by a single man. 

The accidental burning of wounded men occurred four days before the Battle of Spion Kop, on January 20, according to eyewitness Maurice Harold Grant. (In that case, the wounded men were Boers, who were immolated in a fire unintentionally set by British guns.) Shell-fire is reported to have singed some of the grass at Spion Kop, but no wounded men were burnt there . . . so far as we know. One thing that comes through quite clearly in the accounts of Spion Kop is how chaotic the battle was, and how easy it was for important incidents to occur in one part of the battlefield, while soldiers fighting in another part of the battlefield were quite unaware of those incidents. So few accounts exist of the battle that it's likely we will never know of many major events that took place there. At any rate, I inserted that episode into my story because I wanted to focus attention on a group of men who receive very little screen time in the British officers' reports on the battle: the wounded. 

In one of those Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction moments, three of the men who took part in the Battle of Spion Kop were the future South African prime minister Louis Botha, the future British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Mahatma Gandhi. Botha was there as a Boer general, Churchill was serving as a British war correspondent and soldier, and Gandhi was head of the British forces' Natal Indian Ambulance Corps, which was charged with bringing the wounded down from Spion Kop. (The removal of the wounded from the battlefield itself was undertaken by the all-white Natal Volunteer Ambulance Corps, but it's clear from one of the eyewitness accounts that the Indians underwent casualties as well, so for the sake of simplification, I have centered my own tale on the actions of the Indian corps.) Gandhi actually sympathized with the Boer cause, a fact I've lightly alluded to in my story. 

Boys served in both armies during the Boer War, but as far as I know, the British army did not usually employ them as messengers. 

The characters' beliefs on politics, religion, society, and sexuality are not meant to correspond in any exact manner to the situation in our world at the end of the nineteenth century. Those beliefs grow instead out of my premise – from the _Turn-of-the-Century Toughs_ cycle as a whole – that the continent we know as North America was settled by the inhabitants of other continents in ancient times, and therefore certain ancient and medieval customs became important on this continent. 

On the other hand, the quotations at the beginning of each section of my story, as well as a few lines of dialogue, are taken from words that were actually spoken or written during or after the Battle of Spion Kop. Occasionally, I have altered punctuation or spelling or have abridged the texts, and of course I replaced any references to our own world, but otherwise I made no alterations to these striking words. 

The original speakers or writers were as follows: 

o—o—o

_". . . we won't all be coming back."_ —Commandant Hendrik Prinsloo of the Boers' Carolina Commando, to his soldiers. Prinsloo captured Aloe Knoll and Conical Hill, two key assault points next to Spion Kop. Over half his men died during the battle. 

_"The unquestioning subordination of the private judgment . . ."_ —Bron Herbert, as edited by L. S. Amery, in Volume 3 of _The Times History of the War in South Africa_ (published in 1905), referring to the decision to retreat from Spion Kop. 

_"It has got to stay there."_ —General Sir Redvers Buller to Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington, upon being asked what he wished the British attack party to do, once it had taken Spion Kop. Repington then suggested that it would be helpful if guns were sent up the hill. (Repington later wrote, "There was no plan except that we were to take the hill and stay there. Some 1700 men were to assault a hill 1740 feet high in the centre of the Boer position, and the rest of Buller's 20,000 men were to look on and do nothing.") 

_"The operation will be conducted . . ."_ —Attack orders issued on 23 January 1900 by General J. Talbot Coke, after he had received orders from General Charles Warren to occupy Spion Kop. General Warren, who was subordinate to General Buller, was in charge of the overall operations at Spion Kop. 

_"They went up recruits . . ."_ —General Buller to the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa. 

_"Let us struggle and die together."_ —General Louis Botha to General Schalk Burger. The two generals led the Boer attack on Spion Kop. 

_"We got up about four o'clock . . ."_ —General Edward Woodgate, initially in charge of the British occupation of Spion Kop. 

_"Am exposed to terrible cross-fire . . ."_ —General Woodgate, shortly before he was mortally wounded at Spion Kop. 

_"Reinforce at once or all is lost. . . ."_ —Colonel Malby Crofton, who took over command of the British forces at Spion Kop when Woodgate and three more senior officers all fell in battle within a short time of one another. Colonel Crofton later claimed that a signalman rephrased his calmer request for assistance. 

_"Streams of wounded obstructed the path. . . ."_ —Winston Churchill. He was twenty-five years old at the time. 

_"The sun became hotter and hotter, and we had neither food nor water."_ —Deneys Reitz, who participated in the Boer firing line that was located directly in front of the British forces. He was seventeen years old at the time. 

_"I am sending two battalions . . ."_ —General Warren. He was responding to Colonel Crofton's message, not realizing that Crofton had already been wounded out of the battle. 

_"ordered to move again as fast as possible in single rank . . ."_ —Private Walter Putland, a member of the British reinforcements sent to Spion Kop. 

_"I command on this hill and allow no surrender . . ."_ —Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft, whose mounted infantry led the British attack, and who was given command of the British forces at Spion Kop in the late morning, upon the recommendation of General Buller. Several variations of this speech were recorded by witnesses. 

_"What reinforcements can you send to hold the hill tonight?"_ —Colonel Thorneycroft to General Warren. 

_". . . ammunition is running short."_ —Colonel Thorneycroft to General Warren. 

_"I have withdrawn the troops . . ."_ —Colonel Thorneycroft to General Warren. Thorneycroft had received no messages from Warren all day, other than the news that he was placed in charge of the British forces at Spion Kop. 

_"We had awful luck . . ."_ —General Buller in a letter that was later made public. 

_"I have done all I can . . ."_ —Colonel Thorneycroft to Colonel G. H. Sim, who was ordered by General Warren to bring arms to Spion Kop. Colonel Sim reached Thorneycroft as the evacuation of the hill was in progress. 

_". . . a bloody mop-up in the morning."_ —Colonel Thorneycroft to Winston Churchill. 

_"Preparations for the second day's defense should have been organized during the day . . ."_ —General Buller in a public comment on Colonel Thorneycroft's conduct. 

o—o—o

A list of all my sources can be found in the bibliography section of my _Turn-of-the-Century Toughs_ website: 

[duskpeterson.com/toughs](http://duskpeterson.com/toughs)

For reasons that are apparent from the source quotations I have used, the wisdom of the British officers was questioned after the Battle of Spion Kop. The courage of the British soldiers was not. Even the Boers were impressed by the bravery of their opponents, who underwent heavy casualties under intense fire, yet continued to hold the summit through the entire day of January 24th, 1900. 

Perhaps the best summary of the Battle of Spion Kop came from General Tobias Smuts of the Boers, who surveyed the British dead on the hill's summit after the battle was over. "I wished," he said, "that I had the power of transporting a dozen of these poor, brave, mangled fellows lying there with headless bodies and shattered limbs, to a certain bedroom in Birmingham or in Government House, Cape Town, so that the two chief authors of this unnatural war should see some of the results of their policy on waking from sleep in their safe and luxurious homes. It might induce them to bring this dreadful conflict to a close."

**Author's Note:**

>  _Beta reader:_ Jo/e Naokes.
> 
> [Publication history](http://duskpeterson.com/cvhep.htm#spyhill).
> 
>  _Spy Hill_ was written as a gift to the members of the [M/M Romance](http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/20149-m-m-romance) group at Goodreads, as part of the [Love is Always Write](http://www.goodreads.com/series/79570-love-is-always-write) event, in response to an [image prompt](http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-11093086-greek-chariot.php) accompanied by the following text prompt by [Pete W](http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6139194-pete-w): "We both stood in front of the relief staring at it. He was the one on the ground and I was the one standing over his body. Tried and failed to protect him then. His warm hand squeezed mine in vice like grip, reminding me that we were alive now. That what happened then was no longer important. We have each other again now. We made a solemn vow to each other that history would not repeat itself."
> 
> This story was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com). Copyright © 2012, 2014, 2017 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The story is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The [author's policies on derivative works and fan works](http://duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm) are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm). This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.


End file.
